Sorry for the duplicate question but I'm a newbie and see that I posted wrong the first time. Parked a domain from my previous company website on top of my existing company website. The URL from the other site is now showing for some of my top keywords in the SERPS but with my meta info and linking to my page. How do I fix this?
1 Answer
Do a 301 redirect from the parked domain to the new domain. That will tell the search engines that the existing domain is the main one and will eliminate potential duplicate content issues. It will also be less confusing for your users as they will see a consistent domain when accessing your site.
If you are using Apache you can do this easily with a snippet in an .htaccess file in your root web directory:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?newdomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.existingdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
answered Apr 30, 2014 at 1:38
-
Forget the Options +FollowSymlinks as they belong to the Directory directive allowing to follow symbolic links which is a *nix file system item that does not have anything to do with Rewrite. I am sure it is a simple oversight, but I wanted to be careful to point this out. John knows what he is doing. Commented Apr 30, 2014 at 2:27
-
@closetnoc A copy and paste error. Thank you for pointing that out.– John Conde ♦Commented Apr 30, 2014 at 2:32
-
Anytime. You have helped me and I know the quality of your answers. Commented Apr 30, 2014 at 2:42
-
@closetnoc:
Options FollowSymLinksis actually required for mod_rewrite to work in per-directory .htaccess files - even on Windows. This is apparently a security requirement. The only time you don't need to explicitly setFollowSymLinksis if it is already enabled on the server (which it often is). TryOptions -FollowSymLinks(to explicitly turn this off) and .htaccess/mod_rewrite is likely to break horribly (ie. a 403 when attempting to enable the rewrite engine:RewriteEngine On).– MrWhiteCommented Apr 30, 2014 at 16:20 -
Great info! I will check this out. I have not seen this in the Apache documentation in all these years. I always had +FollowSymLinks (on) but never any symbolic links. It was a very old conventional wisdom to turn this off for security, but I never did. I do not know if this wisdom applies/applied in reality. That was a long time ago. And you know how conventional wisdom is often wrong. I will try and break a site somewhere to check this out for general interest. Thanks! Commented Apr 30, 2014 at 16:28