2 Forums, one database

[Banana Man]

Hi,

I have just bought vbseo for my site PS3 FORUM but i have a problem with the 301's. I have another site PS3 FORUM which is the same site only optimized for google.ie (ireland). The two sites run off the same database so if you go to a topic page from the irish site you will see exactly the same content that is on the .co.uk site but the root domain is different.

I know this causes duplicate content problems but google seems to understand whats going on as i get hits from google.ie to the ps3.ie pages and hits from google.co.uk for the uk version.

Anyway, when i installed vbseo on the PS3 Forum / Playstation 3 Forums site i have a problem because if i want to use vbseo on the PS3 Forum - Playstation 3 Forums version all the pages get directed to the .co.uk site instead of the .ie site. Is their a way of getting around this so that the 301's keep you on the same site?

Thanks

[Mert Gökçeimam]

Using two domains on one forum database will definately hurt your SE rankings since you create duplicate urls. You shall 301 redirect one domain to the other one.

[Banana Man]

I would have thought that myself but it doesnt seem to be the case.
The ps3 dot ie site is ranking no.2 on google dot ie for "ps3 forum" and the ps3-leagues dot co dot uk is ranking no.2 on google.co.uk for "PS3 Forum".

I am worried that if i 301 all the ps3 dot ie url's to the .co.uk site i will lose a lot of the google.ie traffic.

[briansol]

You WILL run into duplicate content issues.

Here's a little discussion about the same story
Google Ranking and Country TLD

[Banana Man]

Ok, i have decided to 301 all the .ie domains to the .co.uk site. If i install vbseo as it is now though it will redirect anyone when they click on a link on the .ie site to the corresponding .co.uk page. When google bot goes to the old .ie domains directly though it will not be 301'd to the corresponding .co.uk domain. Is there a way to set it up that it will do this?

Also, will i have to buy a second vbseo license even though it is really only one site on two domains and i will only be keeping the .co.uk?

Thanks again

[Banana Man]

If i used the RewriteBase directive in the .htaccess file only on the .ie domain and added in the .co.uk domain would that do it?

If this will do it how do i set it up exactly, do i just remove the # from the start of these 3 lines and then add in the .co.uk base url?

#RewriteBase /

#RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yourdomain\.com
#RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/forums/$1 [L,R=301]

[Banana Man]

I have decided to keep to two forums on separate tld's. I dont see any duplicate content problems as google just shows the .ie domains in google.ie and the .co.uk domains on google.co.uk

I have a problem setting this up though. All the links on the .ie forum are directed changed to the .co.uk domain by vbseo. is there a way of avoiding this on the .ie site?

Thanks

[Joe Ward]

vBSEO pulls your forum root URL from the vBulletin database. Since you can only specify one version there, it is not a capability of vBSEO.