Hosting Multiple Domains on one Hosting Account - Bad for SEO?

[Sharpfish]

I hope someone can clear this up for me.

I am looking at a number of domain names (already own a few) and would like to have them all point to the hosting on one (large) account. I know more and more host providers are allowing this (6,10,20, unlimited).

So for example I could have

www.mycompanysite.com
www.mygamename.com
www.myunrelatedbutstillinterestingsite.com

And obviously I would point each one to the correct directory on the hosting server.

What I want to know is does this kind of re-directing affect Page Rank and SEO in general? I know many of you do this already so is it ok?

Also do you need to set the DNS records to the host rather than using the registrars "parked" DNS (i.e is this more benificial for ranking/seo).

I know temp redirects are bad, perms are ok - what does a redirect in the case of a "parked" domain do?

Lastly, would the actual name I use as the "main" domain:

www.mycompanyname.com

Be shown when on the other domains? ie www.mycompanyname.com/gamesite/highscores.php?

If you use masking it means you have to put your meta data into the registrars forms rather than having complete control over it as you do normally.

To sum up - is having a host that allows multiple domains (not subdomains) like having each domain name on it's own server from an SEO/RANKING point of view. And will there be any penalisation (thanks google) from having them interlinked - seemingly seperate domains - but actually all on the same server? Does each domain get a seperate I.P?

Sorry for all the questions but I can't seem to find definate answers on this. Note, I know how to do it all technically but can not find anyone admitting/denying that it can affect traffic/seo/rank.

THANKS!

[Sharpfish]

Something else I thought of. When I buy a hosting account, virtually all of them give you a "free" domain name. However in most cases it's for the same length as your hosting account. Also in certain cases It is for just a year - so called "domain name for life", which in reality gets renewed every year automatically. Having read into SEO a bit I am aware that the lease time of a domain helps the rank of it - ie 1 year is considered as "fly by night" - 5 years is taken more seriously.

Is it better to get all of your important domain names through i.e godaddy.com (having payed for them for over 2 years for maximum benifit) and then just get a host and point all the domains to it?

The problem is - what to do with the free name? You have to choose a domain name with your hosting so do you guys just use "genericname" as your domain then point all your important domains to that - or do you use "yourcompanyname" as the "free" one (possibly inccuring the 1 year penalty for ranking etc).

Of course if the renewal is invisible (and it shows as infinite years, even though it's automatically renewed each year) then I suppose that isn't a problem.

Just a few points I would love clarification on if anyone cares to share their knowledge.

Thanks again

[Robert Cummings]

I always refuse the free domains. I keep that my business, not theirs. If you're professional, you'll do the same.

[soniCron]

Having read into SEO a bit I am aware that the lease time of a domain helps the rank of it - ie 1 year is considered as "fly by night" - 5 years is taken more seriously. Last I heard, this was speculative.

The problem is - what to do with the free name? If the host supports virtual domains, then host a gaming site -- a portal, perhaps. Or, maybe put your blog on it. The forums for your games. A personal homepage. There are a million things you can do with it -- get creative! :)

[Sharpfish]

I always refuse the free domains. I keep that my business, not theirs. If you're professional, you'll do the same.


OK, but maybe you could answer the question that would lead me to having to refuse it: If I did "refuse" the free domain name, what do I have to "Locate" my hosting for other domains to forward to?

If I use DNS that only points to the generic hosting server - I still need my ip. The confusion is probably because my current hosting/domain name provider is a bit secretive or rather vauge on these things - I think they want to keep hold of you ;) which is part of the reason I want to change.

Anyway - if I had multiple domains that I wanted to forward to the actual hosting location what do I use if I have no "free domain name"? Or should I register the domain name first (fully under my control) then when I buy hosting I can use THAT name straight off the bat - and forward any future ones to that domain name?

I hope that is clear-ish, sorry - my mind is blank today.

Thanks

[Sharpfish]

Last I heard, this was speculative.

If the host supports virtual domains, then host a gaming site -- a portal, perhaps. Or, maybe put your blog on it. The forums for your games. A personal homepage. There are a million things you can do with it -- get creative! :)

Well I'll keep an open mind on the first point - either way I would still want it over a larger stretch than 1 year so If I avoid "free domain names" then it wouldn't be a problem.

The second point, I didn't mean what to PUT on the domain name (trust me, I have far more ideas than I have time for - creativity is not a problem), but what technically to do with it - ie when you forward "company.com" to "didntwantthisbuttookitanyway.com/companyname" as the main hosting domain does it end up troubling the companyname.com by doing things like displaying the main domain name in links etc? and again, specifically SEO/rank.

Thanks :)

[soniCron]

...when you forward "company.com" to "didntwantthisbuttookitanyway.com/companyname" as the main hosting domain does it end up troubling the companyname.com by doing things like displaying the main domain name in links etc? and again, specifically SEO/rank. There are a couple types of things you can do with the domain. If the host supports virtual domains, then you can have www.whatever.com point to the /whatever subdirectory, but it'll look like you're just getting http://www.whatever.com/. Then there are redirects, which will send the visitor to www.sharpfish.com/whatever/ instead. Your host has to support these methods, however, in order for you to use them.

[Sharpfish]

Yup - thanks. So take it for granted that the host supports multi-domains on one account (ie Dreamhost, Bluehost etc) and then my domain name is resolved to the directory of www.genericfreename.com/companydirectory and you say it "looks" like "www.companyname.com" still - this is done with masking? (if so I already do that for a domain that re-directs to www.realityfakers.com.

In that case, indeed in the address bar the url www.othername.com is shown, but in the status bar, when I hover over links it shows the "real" path ie:

www.genericfreename.com/companydirectory/game.htm

rather than

www.companyname.com/game.htm

If your host allows for multi domains, will it always show it as the latter rather than the former? This is where I am confused because my current host DOESN'T allow "Multi domains" only re-directed/forwarded to a directory and as I say I get the full path rather than the masked path. And again, getting to the meat of the question - does all this trickery play havok with SEO/RANKS or is it exactly the same as having a seperate host+domain for each domain name?

thanks

[Gary Preston]

I would imagine that having multiple domains all pointing to the same website would affect your page rank if different people used different ones to link back to your site.

For example google might see you have 100 link backs for www.abc.com then you may have another 250 link backs for www.mysite.com. These would probably count as seperate entries into google even though they link to the exact same website.

I'm not 100% on this, as the page rank system is still largely unknown in how it works. But it makes sense to me :)

[Sharpfish]

Hi Gary.

They wouldn't be linking to the "exact same website" - which I didn't explain clearly. Of course they would be their own sites but just hosted on the same server BUT (and this is the point I need clarifying) they WOULD be going through that same websites name "www.genericname.com" to get to the specific directory, and that is what causes me to wonder if good old google would see this as something bad (ie does it just see "www.nicedomain.com" or "www.genericname.com/nicedomaindirectory".

If the later then I think, as you did, that you would be penalised as it thinks you are trying to spam and or duplicate content.

To be clear there would NOT be duplicate content on any of the domain names but the above process may indicate there is.

[soniCron]

Ok. The masking you're describing is probably nothing more than a frame on the page, linking to the new location.

What you're talking about:

User types: http://www.freedomain.com/
User gets: http://www.freedomain.com/ which is a frame that loads http://www.realityfakers.com/
Link says: http://www.realityfakers.com/link.php


Virtual domains work like this:

User types: http://www.freedomain.com/
User gets: http://www.freedomain.com/
Link says: http://www.freedomain.com/link.php

Now, for Google:

If you are creating different sites (one at www.freedomain.com and one at www.realityfakers.com, both with different data), then you won't have a problem with SEO ranking. They'll each function like normal (because it is literally doing what any shared hosting plan does: Read from a different directory depending on the domain requested).

However, if you have www.freedomain.com look identical to www.realityfakers.com (same data), and just use them to mirror (?!) the site, then you can potentially lose Page Rank, for a couple reasons: The hits and links are split among the two domains, so the maximum linkback potential is far less for each site. Google handles identical sites with caution, so you run a fine line between mirroring and spamming.

Think of virtual domains as what your current host does with the other 2,492 sites on your physical server. When the user requests http://www.othersite.com/, the browser sends the domain requested in the HTTP header. The server (the same one that your site resides on) reads that, and says, "othersite.com loads from /usr/home/othersite" and outputs the data from /usr/home/othersite. Then, when the user asks for http://www.realityfakers.com/, the server looks it up and it says "realityfakers.com loads from /usr/home/realityfakers," and returns the appropriate data.

Lookup the IP address for your website, then try going to that IP address in your browser -- you won't get anything useful, let alone your site.

[Sharpfish]

Thanks Daniel,

Well yes masking is working like that at the moment (frame based - and I don't like frames in any context ;) )

So, really I think you have answered my question that virtual servers (which are what hosts that provide "multidomain" abilities are giving?) will be treated just like a single domain on it's own hosting would without obvious side effects like status bar differences.

Because I didn't have a host that allows multidomains (only subdomains) I couldn't check it out in the control panel, if I had I would see the specifics and work it out myself. Didn't want to see it as a buying point if it was as flawed as "masking/forwarding" was.

And no, I wouldn't be duplicating content - all domain names would point to completley different sites (as I mentioned above).

The only thing I now have to ask is - how do you forward a domainname to a virtual server? From the registrars side you can only do www.genericname.com/directory + DNS (+ Masking which I don't want). Is it on the hosts side that you can set it up so that masking is not even required etc?

I know I sound dumb as f*** today but please spell it out for me because as I say, I don't have the actual facility to just check it out.

thanks

[Tom Gilleland]

Here's my list of handy web tools.

Lots of the stuff covered in this thread is at:
http://www.seochat.com/

Website traffic estimates can be checked at:
http://www.alexa.com/

Inbound and Outbound links can be checked here:
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

Validate your web site here:
http://validator.w3.org/

Tom

[Sharpfish]

Yeah they are handy. I use them (and others) quite often.

This thread though was just a specific question about this multi-domain business (I thought it would be a quick reply but my explanations left a lot to be desired ;) ) and not the whole gamut of SEO, pagerank, backlinks etc which I think are covered more than once on the forum elsewhere.

cheers :)

[aaron]

The registrar doesn't know anything about how the domain is hosted... you just give it your DNS server from the host and you are done. The host then takes care of the rest of it. I have 6 domains hosted on my account at HostPC and they all appear as though I simply had 6 separate accounts at a hosting company.

There isn't a downside, aside from one popular website that you have using all the bandwidth and taking down the other sites with it.

[Sharpfish]

The registrar doesn't know anything about how the domain is hosted... you just give it your DNS server from the host and you are done. The host then takes care of the rest of it. I have 6 domains hosted on my account at HostPC and they all appear as though I simply had 6 separate accounts at a hosting company.

There isn't a downside, aside from one popular website that you have using all the bandwidth and taking down the other sites with it.

Thanks. Because from my point of view (with a host that doesn't allow multi-domains) I only have what the registrar provides (the DNS setting and in this case forwarding/masking) I couldn't work out how forwarding/masking would work well from the registrar side only for when I went to a host that DID allow multi-domains.

Not having that option on my hosting side to check it out (which would have made the answer obvious to me) I didn't know if there were settings you could use on host side that let you ignore the registrars settings (except for updating the DNS settings of course). Thanks for the confirmation!

Thanks all.