SEO and 301 Redirects

[thebigkrumm]

Quick question -

I'm interested in setting up several small sites that are very content-specific.

If I use PHP to execute a 301 redirect to a page, will the search engines pick up the domain name and retain it after the page is indexed?

For instance, if I have a domain name "www.awesomesite.com" and I execute the following code to redirect to a WordPress permalink, will the SE's still show and let people search for "www.awesomesite.com"?

<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.totallyradsite.com/blog/who-da-man/" );
?>

[svidgen]

Are you asking whether search engines will credit awesomesite.com with the content at www.totallyradsite.com/blog/who-da-man/ due to the redirect?


... they won't. As far as the search engine is concerned, awesomesite.com is a blank page.

[thebigkrumm]

I think that's what I'm asking What I'd like is for the SE's to see that the site exists and display the site (and be searchable by Google) by the domain. I don't want the link to show in the SE's as the permalink, but I could care less about the address bar - is there a way to do this that is SEO friendly?

I'm a Realtor and the goal is to set up WordPress pages that are neighborhood-specific. I would like each page to have a dedicated domain (ie, "www.countrymeadowsneighborhood.com"). I imagine that my goal must be pretty easy to do, but I don't know the best way to do it aside from a 301 redirect.

[svidgen]

I don't suppose it's possible to simply link to each neighborhood's domain directly. And then, of course, you would link back to the primary domain when applicable. This could actually be very good for SEO, provided that you're not duplicating content, since the search engines will see each site as an independent site. That's good, of course, because all those legitimate "inter-site" links increase the PageRanks of all of the sites.

Again ... this assumes that the sites contain non-duplicate content.

[thebigkrumm]

Jon,

The problem with linking to each neighborhood's domain is that I need for each specific domain to point at the primary domain. For a lot of reasons, I need the neighborhoods to run specifically through the blog - and when I try to do it through my hosting company I get a 'forbidden' error because the permalink isn't actually a directory, but is instead just a clean URL.

I'm not trying to double up SEO juice; the neighborhoods are specific enough that there isn't a ton of competition.

I think what I'm gathering from our conversation is that you don't think the engines will pick up the redirects at all?

[svidgen]

I need for each specific domain to point at the primary domain

I'm not sure I know what you mean by this. Or this:

I need the neighborhoods to run specifically through the blog

But, in regards to this:

I think what I'm gathering from our conversation is that you don't think the engines will pick up the redirects at all?

Not quite. Most crawlers will follow the redirects--better ensured if you [properly] "suffix" the redirect with an HTML document containing a brief "document moved message" and a link to the redirected-to page. However, I wouldn't dare to think that any of the content on the redirected-to site will count towards the PageRank of the redirect-from site.

Does that clarify my understanding of it?

[thebigkrumm]

I need for each specific domain to point at the primary domain

I have a wordpress blog at www.sarasotapropertygroup.com/idx that is my host (primary domain) for all the information about specific properties (specific satellite domains that point to the specific blog page, ie, "www.countrymeadows.com.")

I need the neighborhoods to run specifically through the blog

In other words, I can't have separate pages (index.html, mainpage.html, etc.) The pages are obtained through permalinks and don't physically exist.

The whole idea is for people to be able to go to Google and search for "Country Meadows Neighborhood" and have my domain pop up as "www.countrymeadows.com" instead of "www.sarasotapropertygroup.com/idx/country-meadows/". It's just prettier, and it gives the reader the impression that it's a dedicated website (which, actually, it is - it's just being run from a central content-management site.)

Does that make sense? I really appreciate your responses, thanks for taking the time to help!

[svidgen]

So, you need specific pages to be alias-able with specific domains? ... Are you comfortable editing your apache config file?