A question about hostgator and add-on domains

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John Galt

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So, I have a hosting account with Hostgator (Baby croc).

When I add new domains to my account, it becomes a subdomain... right?

Meaning, although "the world" will type in whatever.com, the site is really at whatever.maindomain.com.

My question is how does this effect SEO for the added domain? Do the search engines see each domain as it's own site, or as branches of the same site?

Also, will this affect my PPC campaigns... will the display url (whatever.com) vary from the destination url (whatever.maindomain.com) enough to get slapped?
 


I'd be interested in knowing the answer to this too. It seems a truckload of marketers vouch for Hostgator, so I can't imagine the consequences are too devastating, but it would be good to have clarity on the issue.
 
1. SERP impact - as long as you don't cross-link, you should be fine.

2. YOU are the one entering the display URL and destination URL. You can enter whatever you want there. If your question was whether you will be penalized, even if you enter www. whatever.com as the display & destination URLs, only because it happened to be an add-on domain, then the answer is no, AFAIK.
 
You can upgrade your account to a reseller account for dirt cheap. 24 bucks a month.

That way you will get a different control panel for every domain if you want.
 
You can addon domains to hosting account (but it is really a mess). The best is upgrading to a reseller account on Hostgator which I did few month back and had no probs till now..
 
what about other hosting services? is addon -> subdomain the standard policy?

does anyone know what dreamhost's policy is? Thanks.
 
John Galt said:
When I add new domains to my account, it becomes a subdomain... right?
Click to expand...

You can access it as a subdomain but you don't have to. That's just the way cpanel handles addon domains

John Galt said:
Meaning, although "the world" will type in whatever.com, the site is really at whatever.maindomain.com.
Click to expand...

No, the site is at whatever.com, the files are at whatever.maindomain.com and can be accessed using whatever.maindomain.com

John Galt said:
My question is how does this effect SEO for the added domain? Do the search engines see each domain as it's own site, or as branches of the same site?
Click to expand...

as long as you don't link to it using whatever.maindomain.com, the search engines will never know it's a subdomain.

You're on shared hosting, there are probably a thousand other domains using the same IP, unless you get a dedicated IP, then all of your sites will be under that IP.

Linking to other sites on the same IP doesn't hurt but it doesn't help either (AFAICT), it can be a way to get a new domain crawled but you probably won't get much link love from the search engines

John Galt said:
Also, will this affect my PPC campaigns... will the display url (whatever.com) vary from the destination url (whatever.maindomain.com) enough to get slapped?
Click to expand...

Don't link to whatever.maindomain.com, addon domains resolve to the domain name you used to set them up, use whatever.com.


paul65359 said:
what about other hosting services? is addon -> subdomain the standard policy?
Click to expand...

Any cpanel account will handle addon domains that way. If you have a reseller account with something like WHM, you can set up individual accounts and not have to worry about addon domains.
 
reseller is the way to go ;)
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John Galt said:
So, I have a hosting account with Hostgator (Baby croc).

When I add new domains to my account, it becomes a subdomain... right?

Meaning, although "the world" will type in whatever.com, the site is really at whatever.maindomain.com.

My question is how does this effect SEO for the added domain? Do the search engines see each domain as it's own site, or as branches of the same site?

Also, will this affect my PPC campaigns... will the display url (whatever.com) vary from the destination url (whatever.maindomain.com) enough to get slapped?
Click to expand...

1. Yep
2. Yep
3. No Adverse Effect. SE sees the site not the sub.
4. Dont put whatever.com in the display and then send to whatever.domain.com and you'll be ok. Like homeboy said, the SE doesn't know its a sub- keep it a super secret.
 
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