ok, I need some techy geeks to help me out because I dont have a clue about websites!!

I'll give you a bit of background info so you might be able to understand what the problem is.... Originally when I did nails I had a website designed by Seanny and it was great within no time it was no.1 on most of the search engines etc... this site was www.aspirations-nails.co.uk

Shortly after this I decided that nails werent for me and I wanted to just do spray tanning, I needed to purchase a new domain name which I did... www.about-tan.co.uk I went into the original aspirations site and changed all the content and with freeola I pointed the original site to the new one and that too started to get rated high in the search engines although it still showed the aspirations-nails web address, the content was tanning related (hope you are still with me)

This has been running this way for about a year with no problems... I have updated the content a few times with new products, prices etc etc... I have recently noticed that when I search for 'spray tan Basildon' it is the About-tan site that is being found!! WOO HOO!!! great I thought, so I dont need to keep the Aspirations site going anymore, just the about tan site.....

I didnt renew the Aspirations site, although it is still being found at the moment... but I keep checking to see if it has dissapeared from google listings yet... Today I noticed that the aspirations site is top of the list and the About-Tan one is bottom?? but they are both still valid links??

Here is my question, do I always need to keep both web addresses running (costing me double) if not, how can I get the About tan one up as high as the aspirations nails one was? I cant understand what the difference is as they are both the same site, only the www address is different??

Help, I am confused as I get 95% of my clients from my website I cant let it fall out of site.... bear in mind I know NOTHING about websites so talk to me like an idiot LOL

Thanks geeks

Hello.

I think i know what the problem is.......

It's what google would call duplicate content.

The little google robot has indexed your first and now it has also indexed the second site. Its gathered the information from both and realise they are same. It then works out which content was there first and sends the other content over to the bad bin.

This is a very simple explanation. If you need for info let me know.

Cheers

oh great, that sounds like an easy problem to fix then at least! So do you think if I just dont renew my original site the new one will just take over and be popular again?

I'm suprised it took google so long to find that they were duplicates though, it must be over a year now....

Thanks for the reply Robert

What you could also do for your old site is do a bit of meta tag trickery - set the "robots" metag tag for the old site to "noindex, follow" so that search engines will not index the old site, but will follow links in it - and then add another meta tag to re-direct browsers to the new site.

i.e.

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow" />
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=http://www.about-tan.co.uk/">

Although, so saying, beware of the use of the second meta tag listed, as some search engines can treat it as spam, META Refresh (redirect) and Search Engines

A better solution would be to set up URL rewriting on the web server, so that it would send an HTTP response back to the browser when you click on http://www.aspiration-nails.co.uk/ telling it to instead go to Spray Tanning Services Basildon - but that would require access to the web server's config file - which you would need to ask the web host to do for you.

whoosh! lol

thanks for that Ruth

I'll have to get someone who knows what they're doing to look at it for me

eh? I certainly know who to come to if and when I ever want to set up a website

Thank you

I have my own web server too so can do all the configuration stuff at the drop of a hat...

I am sure ruth mills would be able to help u hun (quickly hides as she is already over worked ), she is amazing and resonable to. She has just done this site for me and i love it and i come first on google which is brill, god knows how she does it, something to do with them metatag thingys
www.waxing4women.co.uk

hope that helps and good luck