Multi Domains on one Hosting Account (Affect SEO?)

tawnymarie said 2 years, 3 months ago:

I have the “Ultimate” Hosting package. I have roughly 32 domain names and I’m working on them in groups. Web Design and Content is what I do so I’m not really familiar with the technical aspects of hosting etc.

So on the hosting account I have a primary domain name right? I’m adding my other domains and making a folder for each domain name but, have noticed they’re now also linked to my primary domain name. In other words it’s something like this http://www.primarydomain.com/otherdomain
The other domain is now the domain I added through the DNS to this hosting account. I’m using both WP and Joomla apps for each domain and it’s listing the primary domain as well…”primary” and the actual domain for the site as the “alias”…

I really was hoping these websites would be completely separate. The GoDaddy Rep made it sound as though they would be. Seeing them linked to my primary domain isn’t what I had in mind. I don’t understand if this is a must…I’m assuming now that if I want to host multiple domains that they need to be attached to that primary domain (folder wise etc)…To me that could mess up my SEO attempts since now that website technically has two domain names and it seems the primary content is being databased to that primary domain and not individually…Just bites…

Anyone have any familiarity with this?

chrisg said 2 years, 3 months ago:

@tawnymarie,

Have you setup a site map for each of the domains you are hosting on your account? If not, I would recommend reviewing the following article which explains the purpose of a site map for search engines to crawl through your Primary Domain, subdomains, and aliased domain names on the hosting account. This also provides the steps for setting up a site map through the Hosting Control Center interface.

http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/3644

Christopher G.

ShelLuser said 2 years, 3 months ago:

Well, with some many domains I’d personally be looking first at your own server instead of a hosting account. But given your history and goal (design and content) I can see why you’d take this route.

I keep a (free) hosting account around for testing purposes (I do my serious hosting using either Website Tonight or through my own server) so I don’t have any real hands on experience so to say.

Still; I wonder if Site Redirects couldn’t help you out here; although I’ll be the first to admit that this is a bit of a hack..

Apart from chrisg’s suggestion to keep search engines away I wonder if this could help you to enforce some separation. iow; if people use “www.primarydomain.com/otherdomain” they’ll be redirected to somewhere else (for example a home made 404 page (“page not found”) or something) whereas the real subdomain would work out.

Once again; I’m not 100% positive if this will work, but from what I’ve seen about forwarding in my free hosting plan I think it might be worth checking out.

mr_a said 1 year ago:

I have multiple domains on the godaddy windows ultimate hosting plan. As soon as I added a second domain I noticed the search engine ranking for the primary domain had drastically been effected. It was now only getting around third of the hits it was previously getting. Once I removed the second domain things had changed backed to normal i.e. the primary domain was ranking well again. So figure it out. Perhaps a reseller package would be better for seo for multiple domains as it would allow you to have a seperate account for each domain. Plus you can sell webhosting and get some or even more money back than you invested.