Two domains for one site, how to without getting penalised

[BlackStorm]

Hey,
I have a site and I just bought a new domain name for it.

I want to point both domains to the site because the new name is easier to brand and market but I know people will still be using the old domain to access the site.

What is the best way to set it up so google doesn’t index both separate and penalise my site?

 

[Matthew]

I am looking for an answer to exactly the same question also. I have been meaning to hunt around for the answer and will see if I can find an answer to this today.

 

[Matthew]

I have found mixed reviews about this. Some say it doesnt matter at all as long as you do not promote the alias URL.

Others say there are problems with having domain.com and www.domain.com and recommend redirecting domain.com to www.domain.com so that search engines only see 1 version of it.

There doesnt seem to be any official answer though and people are just speaking of what they think works best.

I am tempted to create some kind of redirect so that domain.com/showthread.php?t=12121 automatically adds the www on the front and keeps the rest of the URL. Not sure how to do that yet in IIS, but Nix servers can be done with .htaccess.

I will also be attempting to do the same for domain1.com/showthread.php?t=12121 to move automatically to www.domain.com/showthread.php?t=12121

Also tempted to configure MOD Rewrite to have more SE friendly URL's but I have read that most SE's can index now with a query in the URL.

Anybody else have any thoughts and suggestions on this topic?

 

[BlackStorm]

I have read a lot of different answers too, doesn't seem to be a specific answer to this.

SE spiders can read dynamic URLs better now and static still do a lot better in the results.

Take a look at the results for most searches and they are normally static results from sites that also have dynamic links.

 

[Matthew]

I have been taking a look at sitemaps recently to see if this has any effect on SE results.