I’ve talked some about parked domains in the past, but since so many of my clients are confused on this subject, I wanted to provide a bit more information.  The first thing to understand are that parked domains are additional domains which you host or have pointed at your hosting account by a domain registrar that display the same website as your primary domain. If you’re one of our clients you can learn about managing a parked domain in your hosting platform at: http://support.hostgator.com/articles/cpanel/what-is-a-parked-domain-how-do-i-create-and-delete-one

As for the reason to use them, parked domains are often used by businesses that want to have more than one web address for advertising purposes.  The important thing to note is that if you have one or more “hosted” domain names parked/pointed at your site it is a good idea to create a permanent 301 redirect for them so for the search engines not to treat them as duplicate content. 

The best way to do re-directions like this is by using a server-side 301 permanent re-direction instruction. With Unix-hosted sites you do this by modifying the htaccess file. That’s relatively straightforward if you have 2 hosted websites and are re-directing one to the other.

If you would prefer to have a script create your .htaccess file for you, visit http://www.htaccesseditor.com/en.shtml#a_WWW

I tested this script and it provided the following:

<Files ~ “^\.(htaccess|htpasswd)$”>deny from all</Files>
Redirect permanent http://www.parkeddomain.com http://www.maindomain.com
order deny,allow

There are many methods of doing a 301 (permanent) redirect, and here is a sample .htaccess script that will do that:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteEngine onRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^parkeddomain.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^parkeddomain-2.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.maindomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

* Note: In this example, two different parked domains are linked to the same new domain.

Another common option is to direct “non-www” version of a domain to “www” which the following version offers:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Ok, so as not to digress, what I wanted to stress today is that frequently domain registrars will point the parked domain name to your primary domain on your behalf; the problem is domain registration services often do this re-direction either by using a 100% frameset or by using fast meta refreshes. Both will cause problems.

The 100% frameset means that your real website pages get ‘wrapped’ inside another page that uses the parked domain name.  As a result exactly the same content can be found under multiple domain names and so the risk of duplicate content penalties exists. For this reason we recommend you don’t do this. Some domain registration services refer to this domain re-direction method as being ‘cloaked’.

This is an example of a fast meta refresh (which should not be used):
<meta HTTP-EQUIV=”Refresh”CONTENT=”0;URL=http://www.yournewsite.com/”>

‘Non-cloaked’ domain re-direction is the right approach. This means that when someone types the parked domain name into their browser your website gets presented with its normal domain name in the URL and not the parked domain name.  e.g. they type in www.yoursite.org and your main domain www.yournewsite.com gets shown.

The problem with ‘parked’ domains is they’re not hosted on a webserver with an htaccess file you can modify. So again, simply go to the name registrar and find the option where you can redirect the the old URL to the new URL, don’t choose the option to have it cloaked or masked, etc.

There are times where you will need to redirect a URL to another, and considering that there are lots of methods of redirection, and lots of questions about the best method, I wanted to offer a few thoughts on this.  Firstly, we need to look at the common reasons for redirection.  These are:

Moving to a New Domain
There will be times where your domain name will need to change, and since it will take some time for the search engines to index the new URL and its pages, you will want to ensure that any inbound links to your old website are redirected to your new one.

URL shortening
With dynamic websites, the URL is often long if some form of rewrite is not implemented.  In this scenario a URL shortening service is used to provide a shorter (easily remembered) URL that will link to the longer, default version.

Persistent aliases for changing URLs
Sometimes the URL of a page changes even though the content stays the same, a common practice of SEO to optimize a page name for keyword benefit.

Removing referer information
When a link is clicked, the browser sends the HTTP request a referrer which indicates the source of the link. Since sensitive pages may have sensitive URLs a redirection page that performs referrer hiding could be embedded in all external URLs, transforming the page URL. This technique also eliminates other potentially sensitive information from the referrer URL, such as the session ID, and can reduce the chance of phishing by indicating to the end user that they passed a clear gateway to another site.

There are less favorable reasons that URLs are redirected as well, which include:
 
Manipulating search engines
Not too long back it was a common practice to create “doorway” pages (page created solely for the purpose of redirection) as a means to redirect traffic.  This practice is no longer commonly used since it is seen as a blackhat technique, and most search engines are wise to it and will either reduce a page/s ranking or exclude them from a search index.

Satire and criticism
A domain name that conveys one meaning can be redirected to any other web page, sometimes with malicious intent. The website shadyurl.com offers a satirical service that will create an apparently “suspicious and frightening” redirection URL for even benign web-pages.

Manipulating visitors
URL redirection is sometimes used as a part of phishing attacks that confuse visitors about which web site they are visiting. Because modern browsers always show the real URL in the address bar, the threat is lessened. However, redirects can also take you to sites that may attempt to trick them into downloading antivirus software and ironically installing a trojan of some sort instead.

URL redirection methods

With URL redirects, incoming links to an outdated URL can be sent to the correct location. This is often needed when a site has been linked to by others, as most established websites will be.  In the same regard, many search engines will take some time before crawling a website, and the URL redirect ensures that one doesn’t receive a “404 page not found” error.  By using a “moved permanently” redirect to the new URL, visitors will end up at the correct page, and in the next search engine crawl the new URL should be indexed.  There are several techniques to implement a redirect, which I have listed the “common” ones following:

Meta Refresh:
In many cases, a refresh meta tag is the simplest redirect method. However, most designers discourage this approach as I will explain below.  The way this works is that you add a metatag to the <head> portion of the page as follows: <meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”6;url=http://yourdomainname.com/”>
 
The http-equiv=”refresh” attribute tells the browser that this meta-tag is sending an HTTP command rather than a standard meta-tag (tells the server that the page is going to be reloaded or sent somewhere else). The content=”6″ is the amount of time, in seconds, until the browser should reload the current page (you can put any time value here); this is followed by a semicolon and the url to be redirected to. One of the most common uses of the reload version of the refresh tag is to reload a page that has dynamic content on it. For example: a stock ticker or weather map, and some use them to reload ads.

It is important to note that Meta refresh redirects have been used by spammers to fool search engines, so search engines may remove sites that use a lot of them from their database. It’s better to use a 301 Server Redirect instead. In addition there is a usability concern since a redirect that happens quickly (less than 3 seconds) won’t allow those with older browsers to use the “Back” button. And, refreshing the current page can confuse people, and some may see this as a deceptive tactic and not trust your website.

Manual redirect:
The simplest technique is to ask the visitor to follow a link to the new page, usually providing a simple page with company name and logo, and a bit of text saying something like “Our location has changed, please find us at: <a href=”http://www.yourdomainname.com/”>Our New Website</a>.  This method is often used as a fall-back for automatic methods; useful if the visitor’s browser does not support the automatic redirect method.

As noted above, a permanent redirect is generally considered the best method of redirection, though depending on your needs, there are a few different HTTP status codes available.

300 multiple choices (e.g. offer different languages)
301 moved permanently
302 found (originally temporary redirect, but now commonly used to specify redirection for unspecified reason)
303 see other (e.g. for results of cgi-scripts)
307 temporary redirect
 
All of these status codes require that the URL of the redirect target be given in the Location: header of the HTTP response. This is a sample of an HTTP response that uses the 301 “moved permanently” redirect:
 
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://www.yourdomain.com/
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 174
 
<html>
<head>
<title>Moved</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Moved</h1>
<p>This page has moved to <a href=”http://www.yourdomainname.com/”>http://www.yourdomainname.com/</a>.</p>
</body>
</html>

Note that the “content-length” is the number of bytes of data in the body of the request or response. The body is the part that comes after header portion in source code view.

Server-side scripting for redirection:
For CMS websites, a mod-rewrite (applied to the .htaccess file) is the best method of redirection. There are a variety of methods, often dependent on the server platform (Apache, Microsoft) and type of scripting used (PHP, ASP, Perl, etc).  For example:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.yourdomain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain2.com/$1 [R,L]

It is important to note that rewrites are used for many things beyond just the redirect of the domain.  Common uses are protecting images and files from hotlinking, redirection to other directory, redirect multiple domain name versions (often a non-www to a www. format), and redirect by visitor user agent (browser).

For static websites, one can edit their .htaccess file as well.

Redirect permanent /oldpage.html
http://www.yourdomainname.com/newpage.html
Redirect 301 /oldpage.html
http://www.yourdomainname.com/newpage.html
 
To redirect a requests for any non-canonical domain name using .htaccess or within a <Directory> section in an Apache config file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^.:]+\.)*oldsite\.yourdomainname
\.com\.?(:[0-9]*)?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://newsite.yourdomainname.net/$1
[R=301,L]
 
Use of .htaccess for this purpose usually does not require administrative permissions. However, .htaccess can be disabled by your host.
 
JavaScript redirects:
JavaScript offers several ways to display a different page in the current browser window. Quite frequently, they are used for a redirect. However, there are several reasons to prefer HTTP header or .htaccess redirects over JavaScript redirects: Security considerations, some browsers don’t support JavaScript, some web crawlers don’t execute JavaScript.  That being said, here is a JavaScript redirect option that will read the browser used and redirect accordingly (useful if you have different page versions for different browsers):

<script>
if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf(“Firefox”) != -1)
{
   window.location = “http://www.yourdomainname.com“;
}
else if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf(“MSIE”) != -1)
{
   window.location = “http://www.yourdomainname.com“;
}
else if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf(“Netscape”) != -1)
{
   window.location = “http://www.yourdomainname.com“;
}
else
{
   window.location = “http://www.yourdomainname.com“;
}
</script>

A question that often comes up for the website designer is when is it necessary to change a domain name, and upon changing, what is the best method to link to it?  Firstly, as a rule it is generally not a good idea to change your domain name if you have an established web presence since you may take quite the ranking hit by doing so, but for the new business a URL change can often be beneficial so as to procure a more keyword SEO friendly domain name.

The common reasons for a domain name change and/or redirection are:

Similar Domain Names
A business or organization will sometimes purchase URL variations (or misspellings) of their domain URL to ensure that these are not picked up by someone else (and passed off as the original). This is especially important for large companies.

A related strategy is to reserve top-level domains with the same name, or make it easier for a true “.edu” or “.org” to redirect to a more commonly queried “.com” domain.  An example that comes to mind is thewhitehouse.org.  There is a .com version of the government website which is “adult” related, hence you see the problem.  Of course one can choose to just use the default DNS nameservers (so as to reserve/own it, yet not make it available.

Moving a website to a new domain
There are times when you will need to change a website’s domain name. Another reason to change a domain is in those cases where two websites may merge to create a new web business or organization.

Whatever the reason for the domain name change, it is important to note that one should not have different domain names indexed that point to the same content since duplicate content will lower a site’s ranking.  For example, www.mycompany.com and www.ourcompany.org, should not load the same content.  If you are going to have the two seperate domains, the better option is to have one of the URLs redirect to the other.  So, when one visits www.mycompany.com they will be redirected to the URL www.ourcompany.org. 

As noted above, you may purchase serveral domain name versions and simply reserve (own them), yet otherwise not have them linked in any way.  My personal feeling is that if you wish to have multiple domain name versions linkable, then redirect them, and only submit the primary domain URL to the search engines.  In any case, your hosting company will provide the following options which you should be familiar with:

Parked Domains – A Parked Domain is an inactive domain reserved for later use or one that points to another existing domain.  This parks a domain on top of another domain. For example, the domain name for your hosting account is “domain.com” and you also have registered “domain.net” through your domain.com Domain Manager. You may point domain.net to the domain.com IP address. That is, if you had a domain, mywebsite.com, and pointed mywebsite.net to mywebsite.com, then going to mywebsite.net would bring up the same page and directory structure of mywebsite.com. Likewise, mywebsite.net/directory would go directly to mywebsite.com/directory. However, depending on which domain name was used, that domain name will show in the location bar in your browser. You can also create e-mail addresses for the mywebsite.net domain name from the mywebsite.com control panel.

Redirects – This redirects traffic to a specific a specific directory on one of your accounts. That is, you could have mywebsite.net bring up the contents of mywebsite.com/directory . With a redirect, the address shown in the location bar will change. So going to mywebsite.net will show as mywebsite.com/directory in your browser. This is the method I recommend.

Addon Domains – Addon domains are somewhat of a mixture between a parked domain and a redirect. It offers the functionality of a redirect, but looks like a parked domain. As with a redirect, you can have mywebsite.net point to a specific directory on the mywebsite.com account. But, the account will look just like its own account to a regular visitor. The domain mywebsite.net will show in the browser’s location bar. In essence, you can split up the space on your current account into other smaller domains. Like with parked domains, you will be able to set up specific e-mail address for mywebsite.net from within the control panel for mywebsite.com.