Hi guys

We are working with a client who wants two slightly differernt looking versions of the same website (dont ask!!). If we publish two versions of the site with teh same copy will Google penalise us?

I think I know the answer to this one!

On a related note we are also just about to launch a new site for another client. They have an existing domain name which we arer going to use nfor the main site. they also have several other sites with related content which we also want to take down and point to the new site. What is the best way to do this without upsetting Google spiders? Is it the 303 redirect?

Hope you can help.

Thanks

Simon

you are not going to be able to have both indexed or not for very long... the best thing is to have one blocked by using the robots.txt file and the nofollow,noindex in the pages metatags...

Wow fantastic...fastest reply ever..and as usual fantasticly helpful. Thanks very much.

Any thoughts on the second issue?

Simon
:)

Hi guys


On a related note we are also just about to launch a new site for another client. They have an existing domain name which we arer going to use nfor the main site. they also have several other sites with related content which we also want to take down and point to the new site. What is the best way to do this without upsetting Google spiders? Is it the 303 redirect?


Simon
What you want to do is 301 redirects for the niched sites... pick related pages on the new site and then go through the old sites and 301 redirect the pages to ones that are appropriate.
The benefit here is anyone who happens to have it bookmarked will end up at similiar content and not an index page (which would happen if it was all 301ed to the new domain homepage).
If any of these small pages have any PR it gets passed to the new site's internal pages which strengthens the site overall. Also any inbound links will end up at apprpriate pages which improves the SERP rankings for various keywords.