Redirecting a domain name

You have registered a second domain name — a spelling variant, an old company name or another extension — and want visitors to end up on your real site automatically. There are two ways to do that, and the choice decides what search engines make of it.

Two kinds of redirect

• A permanent redirect (301) says: this address has moved for good. Search engines carry the value of the old address over to the new one. This is almost always what you want.
• A temporary redirect (302) says: come back later, this is only for now. Use it only when that is genuinely the case — during a campaign, for instance.

How to set it up

1. Make sure the second domain name is managed in the same place where you set the redirect, or point its nameservers there.
2. Set the redirect on the domain itself and on the www variant. Forget one and half of what people type will not work.
3. Choose permanent (301), unless you know for certain it is temporary.
4. Test both variants in your browser and check that you land on the right page, not on an error.

Redirect or park?

A parked domain shows an empty page or a provider default screen. That is a missed opportunity: visitors typing your name end up nowhere. A redirect costs the same and does bring you those visitors.

Watch out for email

A redirect applies to web traffic, not to mail. If you also want to receive mail on the second domain name, you need separate MX records and an alias for it. That is a different setting, and it is often forgotten.

What a 301 does exactly is explained in the blog article what is a 301 redirect.