Trying to adhere to SEO best practices with a Domino website...

HCL Notes/Domino 8.5 Forum (includes Notes Traveler)

Subject: Trying to adhere to SEO best practices with a Domino website...

Feedback Type: Question

Product Area: Domino Server

Technical Area: Administration

Platform: Windows 2003 server

Release: 8.5.1

Reproducible: Always

As is best practice, I am attempting to ensure both versions of our website address resolve to the SAME address. I'll explain... Many users leave the "www" off of a website address these days. Therefore, both of the following addresses should be valid to get to a website:

http://abcdef.com.au
http://www.abcdef.com.au

This is easily catered for in Domino, by placing the appropriate values in the "Host names or addresses mapped to this site" field on the Internet Site document in the Domino Directory.

In a recent meeting with our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialist, however, I was informed that while this indeed worked and represented the site in both cases, it was not the "correct" way to do it. This method essentially splits up the site traffic so that the site traffic analysis results were not consolidated.

I was told that I should instead have the "abcdef.com.au" automatically redirect to "www.abcdef.com.au".

"Not a problem", I thought...

I proposed using a "Substitution Rule" that would automatically substitute "http://www.abcdef.com.au" wherever "http://abcdef.com.au" was identified. I was hoping that this would suffice.

We were both unsure that it would have the desired effect though.

Using a "Redirection Rule", you have the option of sending a "301 Redirect" response back to the browser/robot. That option is not available with a "Substitution Rule".

I suppose I am just after some confirmation that I am proposing the correct solution here, or asking whether there is a much better alternative.

If anyone could comment either way, I'd sure appreciate it, as my SEO skills are pretty elementary.

Cheers!

T.

Feedback number WEBB7ZW6C9 created by ~Wei Asatoopulakol on 01/21/2010

Status: Open
Comments: