When you’re building a Joomla! website, it’s possible that you’ve got more than one domain name linking to the same site. Some people play on “safe” when buying a domain name, and buy any extension they can get their hands on. Personally, I’m also guilty of this “technique”. Try to visit any of the following domain names, and see how you end up on the same site:
- www.ofan-workforce.com
- www.ofan-workforce.net
- www.ofan-workforce.info
- www.ofan-workforce.be
- www.ofan-workforce.nl
- www.ofan-workforce.eu
- www.ofan-workforce.org
- www.ofan.be
When I built that website, I had no clue what I was doing – and SEO was just another acronym. But this scenario is bad. What Google sees, is different websites with the same content – and all the “websites” are “punished” by Google for the duplicate content.
Maybe my example was a bit extreme – and don’t you worry, I’ve learned since then and know this is “bad practice”. But you might also stepping into the sama trap without knowing it.
Answer this question. Do you have a Joomla! site that can be accessed by typing both www.yourdomainname.com and yourdomainname.com? In that case, Google will also see this as double content – which will hurt your ranking.
If you’re not too concerned about SEO – or just want a simple solution before paying for a solution like SH404SEF, there’s a simle and free tool that fixes the “double domain names” problem.
The Joomla! plugin you find here aids you, by “redirecting” all incoming domain names to a domain name of choice. So, if you’ve got www.yourdomainnae.com, yourdomainname.com and yourdomainname2.com you can configure which domain name is your ‘primary one’ and all others will direct to it.
Installing and configuring this plug-in is very simple. Just install it as any other plug-in, and then configure it by entering the “primary” domain name. Activate the plug-in and let the plug-in do it’s work.
Note: The plug-in is two years old, but works perfectly. I’ve installed this on quite a few of my sites (not on the Ofan one, obviously)
This will be only a small step towards SEO, but it’s an easy step that anyone can make with little effort and little knowledge of Joomla!
Know of other plug-ins that are just as easy to use, and which achievec the same result? Or do you swear by SH404SEF or an alternative? Let us know in the comments!