Parked Domains

[BopDesign]

I have a client who has a somewhat odd situation for their domains. They've been really inconsistent with how they've used them over the years, which makes for a slightly sticky situation.

The client has two domains: compname.com and fullcompanyname.com. Right now, their website is just HTML (no CMS) and all of the URLs are relative, so both domains work.

Since the new website will be in WordPress, they need to commit to one domain as the primary. Right now, it looks like compname.com is the one they've used the most in ads and such, so I'm going to recommend they go with that.

However, the client has also used fullcompanyname.com a lot. They don't want to have to setup individual 301 redirects for everything. I think it's ridiculous, but you can lead a horse to water... Our developer has done some research and he may have found a solution that will satisfy the client. I just want to find out if there are any SEO implications.

The possible plan is to us compname.com as the primary domain and to park fullcompanyname.com. That way, if someone visits fullcompanyname.com/products/my-favorite-product, it will still work without having to setup 301 redirects. Since the domain is parked, Google won't recognize it as duplicate content, correct?

Just to be clear on the whole situation, I'm insisting that all of the website URLs need 301 redirects, regardless of the domain. The primary concern is with a lot of other stuff on the server that isn't related to the site (email campaign landing pages, image files, assets that are pulled in by the client's software, etc.). The client's concern is about redirecting all that other stuff (and there is a lot of it--thousands of files). The parked domain would seem to fix that, but I want to make sure that the client won't get Google slapped.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

"if someone visits fullcompanyname.com/products/my-favorite-product, it will still work without having to setup 301 redirects." -- what do you mean it will work? Where are your parking the domain? Do you mean domain masking it over the compname.com domain?

I recommend doing individual 301 redirects for the top content pages then doing bulk 301 to a relevant category or homepage for the rest. I would also recommend transferring all content from fullcompanyname.com to compname.com as it'd be a waste to just get rid of it.

[BeanstalkIM]

I have to agree with Oleg in going one-to-one redirects of any pages with links or incoming traffic.  Most hosting plans will let you have multiple domains so setup the one you're "not using" and just one-to-one them in the htaccess file.  Remember - it doesn't need to be every page on the site, just the pages with links or entry traffic.

Speaking on links, when you're choosing the domain to use as the primary I'd be sure to very strongly consider which one has the best link profile.  A bit is lost in a 301 so better not to lose that.

[BopDesign]

I suppose it is domain masking that I meant, not a parked domain. Thanks for the clarification!

[BopDesign]

Can you give me an example of one-to-one redirects? Or do you just mean standard 301 redirects? Or developer found a way to bulk redirect everything from fullcompanyname.com to compname.com, as long as the file structure is the same. Is that what you mean?

[BeanstalkIM]

What I mean by one-to-one redirects is redirecting each page on one domain (the ones with incoming traffic or links) to the equivalent page on the other domain.  They are standard redirects.

Ex:  fullcompanyname.com/category/product1 to compname.com/cat/product1

Hope that helps.