XF 1.4 2 domains and seo duplicate content

[|Jordan|]

I have 2 domains pointing to my 1 installation of Xenforo. All content is available on both domains (i'm involved with a game development team and im hosting the game's website on my xenforo which is why there's a second domain). My concern right now is google and other search engines blacklisting me because of duplicate content.

I was wondering if there were a way to configure my Xenforo to add the meta noindex tag to specific nodes and threads in those nodes when the visitor goes to one of my domains (this way my second domain would only have its sub-forums indexed while everything else is not indexed).

 

[cdub]

I'm confused... why would you want this? Just do a separate install.

 

[SEOmers]

Agreed. Why would you want two domains?

You could always inject canonical tags on the least valuable domain, although I don't see the point.

Why don't you have the duplicate content to only show if the user is logged in?

 

[DragonFlames]

...I don't know if it helps to say it.. but I have dozens of domains pointing to my site that contains XenForo. They simply change to the main site domain as they move to the main site and there is no attempt to use the site with it in some way pretending to be all the different domains.

Some of this comes about as even though our main site is a .com we also own things like the .co.uk version as that seems to make sense. Also because we own lots of domains for possible future use, and some named around subjects that interest us, and it seems to make sense to point them all at our main site and so drive more visitors to it.

I hope the thought is somehow helpful, please ignore it if it isn't.

Steve

 

[|Jordan|]

I can't afford the cost for buying another XF license. The game development team in on can't either as the game isn't commercial (its free) and no one is getting paid for their time.

 

[SEOmers]

I can't afford the cost for buying another XF license. The game development team in on can't either as the game isn't commercial (its free) and no one is getting paid for their time.

Would the URLS be the same on both domains?

Example

Main forum - forum.com/blah-blah-blah
Duplicate - dupeforum.com/blah-blah-blah

If so, cross domain canonical tag would work without causing too many issues. It's just the matter of getting those added automatically to your meta with ease?

The other option is move the duplicate domains 'forum' into a subdirectory and disallow it the folder?

For example. Dupeforum.com/forum

You can disallow /forum/ within your robots.txt

 

[Mr Lucky]

I can't afford the cost for buying another XF license. The game development team in on can't either as the game isn't commercial (its free) and no one is getting paid for their time.

I think you need another licence anyway:

Each License may run one instance of the Software, accessible via one URL. Any attempt to circumvent this limitation is prohibited and will result in the License being revoked.

If you have two URLs, you are unlikely to be blacklisted by Google, but you will probably get lower search result positions as the duplicate content is competing. Best to either use rel=canonical on one domain or redirects.

 

[|Jordan|]

@SEOmers, yes url's are identical. The problem with moving the second domain to sub folder is that i can only block indexing on the second domain from the first. Not the other way around since the same urls can be visited from the first.

@Mr Lucky, I asked XF support before doing this and i was told this:

As long as the domains or subdomains all resolve to the same installation, all of the content is available at every domain or subdomain, and there is no attempt to make them appear as separate installations, then that is fine.

Thanks for the canonical info though, i'm looking into it.

 

[Mr Lucky]

@SEOmers, yes url's are identical. The problem with moving the second domain to sub folder is that i can only block indexing on the second domain from the first. Not the other way around since the same urls can be visited from the first.

@Mr Lucky, I asked XF support before doing this and i was told this:



Thanks for the canonical info though, i'm looking into it.

Be careful. You would need to make sure each page is linking to the exact same page on the canonical domain. ie each page must have it's own canonical, if you add a static canonical to the home page, that would probably be very bad in Google, in theory nothing would get indexed apart from that on page.

But I'm sure there is an easy way to do this.

One thing I'm confused about though, ypou can only have one URL as the board URL in ACP settings, so surely all links within the installation, e.g. the navigation tabs would, go to that domain. Wouldn't this confuse people if they go to one domain, click on a link and find they are in another. I would wonder if I'm still on the same forum.

 

[|Jordan|]

Be careful. You would need to make sure each page is linking to the exact same page on the canonical domain. ie each page must have it's own canonical, if you add a static canonical to the home page, that would probably be very bad in Google, in theory nothing would get indexed apart from that on page.

But I'm sure there is an easy way to do this.

One thing I'm confused about though, ypou can only have one URL as the board URL in ACP settings, so surely all links within the installation, e.g. the navigation tabs would, go to that domain. Wouldn't this confuse people if they go to one domain, click on a link and find they are in another. I would wonder if I'm still on the same forum.

How would i give each node its own canonical?

I have the second domain set up in its own virtual host and its pointing to the same directory as the main domain. So all url's display the second domain when viewing XF from the second domain.

 

[Mr Lucky]

How would i give each node its own canonical?
.

Sorry, I can't help you with the technique of doing that, I was only pointing out that in order to not suffer from having duplicate content listed, it is what you may need.

But I didn't mean for each node, I meant for each page, e.g. every page of every thread should have a canonical link in order for it to not be seen as duplicate content.

How you do it is beyond my technical expertise.