1 reply to this topic

[TimA]

Hi as a newbie to both this forum and websites I am after some advice.... Please excuse me if I do not use the correct terminology!! 

 

I have a couple of .com and .co.uk sites and have just changed web hosting... I did previously have 301 redirects from .co.uk to the .com which was set up by the previous hosting company....

 

I have asked the new company to do a 301 redirect from my .co.uk to my .com's and also a no www. to a www. as I have read that this can affect my positioning in Google. I was quite high 1st 2nd and 3rd page in most of my search terms but seem to have drooped quite a way down and am not sure if this is the problem that I do not have these? 

 

Anyway the company concerned has said what I am asking for will not improve my positioning as Google will not penalise me for duplicate content although I have also said it is not just the duplicate content but also my links...

 

I have access to the htaccess file and wondered with a bit of help from the experts (on here) whether I could change the file content myself....?

 

The main reason I am struggling is that the htaccess file already contains a lot of information as I only have one public_html file but 6 sites contained in it. Confused I nearly am!!

 

Any way this is what the htaccess file holds ( I have changed the websites names to websites 1 2 3 etc )  

 

 

Options +FollowSymLinks 

RewriteEngine on

 

RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} 200

RewriteRule .* - [L]

 

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} websites1.co.uk

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/websites1

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ websites1/$1 [L]

 

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} websites2.com

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/websites2

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ websites2/$1 [L]

 

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} websites2.co.uk

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/websites2

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ websites3/$1 [L]

 

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} websites4.co.uk 

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/websites4

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ websites4/$1 [L]

 

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} websites4.com 

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/websites4

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ websites4/$1 [L]

 

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} websites5.com

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/websites5

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ websites5/$1 [L]

 

Sites 2 and 4 are the same content and are .com and .co.uk

 

Sites 1, 2, 4 and 5 I want to sort to www. from no www.

 

I also want to do a 301 redirect from php pages to htm pages...

 

I don't ask a lot for a first timer!! LOL

 

I look forward to any help you can provide...

[qwerty]

Even if the two sites contain the same content, you can choose to target the .com to the US and the .co.uk to the UK. I don't know where you're located, or where your hosting is, so you might not have any need for this, but if you do it, you won't need to worry at all about having duplicate content.

 

You'd need to add hreflang tags to each page (or the your XML sitemap), indicating that that one page is intended for English speakers in the US and the other for English speakers in the UK.

 

If you don't want to bother with that, I would recommend choosing one domain and redirecting the other to it, and I also think that it's a good idea to make a choice between www and non-www and redirect one to the other. If the site's been around for a while, the search engines won't be concerned about it, as they'll have already chosen which version to list, but I figure it can't hurt to make the choice yourself and keep everything consistent.