wo Domain Names, One Site. SEO Issues?

[RedTruck]

I have two domain names - adhdi dot com and adhd-i dot com. I've developed a web site on adhdi dot com with Adsense and Amazon affiliate links and it's currently ranked 3rd on a Google search for ADHDI.

If I simply duplicate the site and change references from adhdi dot com to adhd-i dot com, will the search engines detect that this is a simple duplicate, and somehow reduce ranking for both sites? Or is this an acceptable way to host content for two terms that are synonymous?

Are there better ways of approaching this?

Thanks,

[draggar]

Your best bet is to 301 the -i domain to the other. Search engines do not like cloning.

[RedTruck]

If I redirect, will I lose SEO relevance? The site is constructed based on the domain name adhdi and the content also reflects adhdi rather than adhd-i.

In hindsight I probably went about this backwards. A Google search of adhdi gets 430 hits, but adhd-i gets 28,700. If I don't clone the site, it would probably make more sense to redo the content as adhd-i and put he redirect on adhdi dot com.

Does this make sense?

Also, if I take this route how best to tell Google about the sitemaps?

[draggar]

For SEO, google will index ADHDI and not index ADHDI-I with a 301 redirect. You want to avoid cloning sites (duplicate content), search engines do tend to not like that and will punish sites for that.

Decide which one domain you want to go with and promote that domain, point the other to the one you promote.

[bhartzer]

If you duplicate the content then most likely Google will know---and they will ignore the duplicate content. So, draggar is right--decide which domain name you want to use and 301 redirect the other domain(s) to that main domain. Unless, of course, you decide to put other unique content on those other domains.

[dcristo]

The best solution would be to rewrite the content for the second website, which can link to the main site for extra link juice.

[RedTruck]

How different does the content need to be to avoid red flags? Does it mean renaming everything (jpegs, etc.)?

[tinner666]

Originally Posted by dcristo

The best solution would be to rewrite the content for the second website, which can link to the main site for extra link juice.

I like this idea. My guess, add/delte sentences. Change phrases.
Nothing in the world that can't be said in different ways or convey different meanings,or the same meaning.IMHO.

[dcristo]

Originally Posted by RedTruck

How different does the content need to be to avoid red flags? Does it mean renaming everything (jpegs, etc.)?

Just rewrite the content. You wouldn't have to rename image files or change the template structure much, google only looks at the content for the most part.