Hosting multiple websites on one account - addon domains

[bphelps]

I've just signed up with a UK host. Price not as good as US hosts but I'm making UK websites at the moment. My host says to host multiple websites I need to create add-on domains and according to them this new domain will be under the main domain.

I assume creating multiple websites on one account is the norm for most affiliate marketers? I'm wondering if an add-on domain will appear to search engines to be connected or 'under' the original domain thus affecting the search results.

I've been getting a bit suspicious about web hosts since alot of them use different terminology to get you to buy their packages. For example, some of them say 'unlimited domains' but what they mean is unlimited parked or sub domains meaning you won't be able to make additional websites without getting a new package.

Thanks

[clubvikram]

i have lost my money with some host in UK, so my advice would be stay little carefull, this is how they foolya' and if you get to know about this subdomain thing do tell me about it, my company needs to have around 10 subdomains regards
vikram

[Larwee]

Here are two threads that can be very helpful.

In the first one, 5 Star members name some of their favorite hosts.

The second one allows you to find out just about everything and anything you might ever want to know about hosts and web hosting.

Your favorite web host

Everything you need to know about web hosting

[Edwin]

Having add-on domains does influence things from an SEO perspective as your add-on domain can be reached by different URL's.

Example:

Your main domain is shoes.co.uk on your hosting account.
Your newly created add-on domain is cars.co.uk

Your add-on domain can be reached by the following URL's.

1: cars.co.uk 
2: cars.shoes.co.uk
3: shoes.co.uk/cars/

This means there are potential duplicate content issues when you're using add-on domains.
You could argue that if you don't link to 2 & 3 then you're in the clear and it won't be a problem then as Google doesn't know how to reach those URL's.

But what if you're competitor finds out about this?
Your competitor could start linking out to 2 & 3 and then your whole SEO position will be weakened because of the duplicate URL's.

Solution?

Use .htaccess code.

Open up Notepad and paste this code into it, of course you will need to change the example URL's to have it apply to your domains.

Options +FollowSymlinks
   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^cars\.co.uk [NC]
   RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.cars.com/$1 [R=301,L]
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.cars\.shoes\.co.uk
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.cars.co.uk/$1 [R=permanent,L]
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^cars\.shoes\.co.uk
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.cars.co.uk/$1 [R=permanent,L]

Save this as .htaccess

Upload it to your add-on folder named cars because that is your root directory for cars.co.uk

Also place a .htaccess file in the main root directory, thus in the root directory of shoes.co.uk that contains this code:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
Redirect /cars http://www.cars.co.uk

I'm not a coding expert, but this is working for me and it should work for you as well if you're using a Apache server.

I hope that helps a bit