How does it impact SEO to provide multiple custom domains for portions of our main site?

Question

I have an ecommerce i.e www.mainsite.example which has various products from merchants when clicking on merchant profile the URL is like www.mainsite.example/company-name-products.

We need now to provide domains to each merchant instead of profile URL. So this URL www.mainsite.com/company-name-products will become www.company-name.com and display the same profile content and product page on both sites. It is a custom CMS so we have already implemented the functionality but now I need to know how it can impact the SEO.

Kindly can you give few guidelines how can I handle this?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 27 '18 at 09:58

When you have multiple domains it causes duplicate content. Google usually handles duplicate content by choosing just one of the duplicates to index. See What is duplicate content and how can I avoid being penalized for it on my site?

The best that you can do is to tell Google which URL you prefer to have indexed. Put rel canonical tags in the head of all your pages. If you prefer to have the custom domain names indexed then use:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://company-name.example/" />

If you prefer to have your main site indexed, use:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mainsite.example/company-name-products/" />

Both copies should use the exact same canonical link. Then Google will only index the "canonical" version that you have chosen.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 27 '18 at 02:17

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Providing different domains is just like when you have different subdomains. so having business1.site.com and business2.site.com is the same as having business1site.com & business2site.com.

You are going to have to markets each subdomain/domain separately, to obtain relevant links to each entity separately.

Each subdomain/domain basically functions as a separate “business” within the overall corporation.

I wouldn't advise it, but if you insist on making subdomains/domains, do a 301 redirect, "Moved Permanently" to your main site because according to Google it only affects 15% of rank

answered Sep 27 '18 at 02:17

Yousef Al-Hadhrami

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Redirects won't work if they want the alternate domains to work for users because of different branding. – Stephen Ostermiller Sep 27 '18 at 02:48
As @StephenOstermiller mentioned we need to have alternate domains for brandings so a redirect isn't possible. I am more concerned about how it will impact SEO and not mark the content as duplicate. – user969068 Sep 27 '18 at 07:29
so you want to keep both domains, but only 1 site gets indexed – Yousef Al-Hadhrami Sep 27 '18 at 11:41

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 27 '18 at 11:54

I wouldn't advice going forward with this one as you already have a good setup, meaning all the company profiles and products pass authority to one single domain.

Now if you want to create multiple domains for them you then split page rank that suppose to stay on the main domain.

Now if you insist going forward with this one id say you can manage minimal to no-SEO impact at all but you are just making the process more complicated, you have to make sure follow best practices on site migration for such action so you have minimal SEO impact.

How does it impact SEO to provide multiple custom domains for portions of our main site?

3 Answers3