Confused About Addon Domains and SEO

[annasusmiles]

I find addon domains really confusing. Everyone I've asked so far says that they don't affect SEO but I find that really hard to believe considering the same content is on both a subdomain and a subfolder and also has it's own unique domain. PLUS (in my case) completely different niche sites are sharing the same hosting.

I really don't want to pay for hosting for all of my different sites but at the same time, if it's better/safer to do so for Panda/Penguin reasons I'm happy to do that.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to your opinions/suggestions!

[deltasystems]

I'm assuming you are using cPanel? You are able to enable redirection within your panel. (I haven't seen this issue outside of cPanel)

Ideally, you are right, you shouldn't have mirror content up. If you can edit the virtual hosts on the server directly that would be another option.

[annasusmiles]

Thank you Zachary. I really appreciate you taking the time to answer this question for me.

Can you (or anyone) please clarify what it means to "edit the virtual hosts on the server directly". I'm not really sure what it means and I don't know how to do it either.

Also, are you suggesting that it's just easier/better to get a complete hosting account for every single domain name?

[deltasystems]

The virtual host is what tells your web server (Apache) basic details about your website. Where to find it (path), where to store error logs, the domain name, and so forth.

Unfortunately you will need a developer to do something for you if you aren't too sure about how to go about the process, and especially if you aren't familiar with Linux platforms.

I'm not suggesting to get a hosting account for every domain -- addon domains are perfectly fine. Just make sure you are redirecting correctly (whether through .htaccess or through cPanel config). I had well over 100 addon domains many years ago when I still used cPanel

[annasusmiles]

Thanks again Zach!

Are you saying that in my htaccess I should be forwarding addon.maindomain.com and maindomain.com/addon to addon.com?

OR is it more complicated/involved than that.

I'll def get a developer to do this for me, but I just want to make sure I know what I'm telling them to do and why.