: Will serving the same content from two different domain names (using DNS CNAME records) hurt SEO? I'm considering setting up a mobile website. This site will be hosted on someone else's server

@BetL925

A CNAME is not a redirect. Rather it is an alias.

If you put a CNAME record in DNS the host name will resolve to the same IP address as the other host name.

The webserver must be configured to handle the content. It has a choice:


Serve the same content as the other domain
Redirect to the other domain


It is the webserver that must make this important SEO decision. The type of DNS record has no bearing on how the site will perform from an SEO perspective.

It sounds like you want to configure the your webserver to redirect one of these domains to the other and avoid duplicate content. You generally want to choose 301 permanent redirects. How you configure your webserver to do the redirect will depend on which webserver you are running, and what kind of access you have to the configuration.

For example in Apache, it is best to create virtual host sections for each host name and put the redirect directive in the appropriate virtual host. However you may not have access to the Apache configuration to do so. In such a case you might have to put rewrite rules in your .htaccess file.

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