Alias Domain

An alias domain is an additional domain name that displays the same website as your primary domain—without running a separate site or content repository. It’s commonly used for brand protection, spelling variants, and short campaign URLs that all resolve to one canonical website.
 

What is an alias domain?

At the web-hosting level, an alias domain maps another hostname (e.g., example.org or example.net) to the same document root as your main site (e.g., example.com). Visitors see identical pages regardless of which domain they type—your job is to make sure search engines understand which version is the primary one.
 

Why use an alias domain?

  • Brand protection: secure common misspellings, hyphenated forms, and key TLDs.
  • Market coverage: capture regional or language variants that should point to the same site.
  • Campaign vanity: run short, memorable domains that resolve to your main website.
  • Legacy transitions: forward traffic from an old brand or domain to the new one.
     

SEO impact and best practices

Multiple domains with identical content can split signals if all versions remain crawlable. The remedy is simple: choose a single canonical host and redirect every alias to it with HTTP 301. Reinforce the choice with consistent internal links and canonical tags.
 

SEO checklist for alias domains

  • Pick one primary: decide on www.example.com or example.com and keep it consistent.
  • 301 redirects: set wildcard redirects so every path on an alias maps to the equivalent path on the primary (e.g., alias.tld/blog → primary.tld/blog).
  • Canonical signals: use the canonical tag and make sure sitemaps and internal links reference the primary domain.
  • HTTPS & HSTS: install certificates for all alias hosts or redirect at the edge before the TLS handshake to avoid browser warnings.
  • Analytics hygiene: filter self-referrals and verify that all traffic is attributed to the primary hostname.
     

How to set up an alias domain (hosting)

  1. Add the alias: in your hosting control panel, point the alias domain to the same document root as your primary site.
  2. Configure redirects: implement a global, permanent (301) redirect from the alias host to the primary host with path preservation (wildcard).
  3. Update DNS: set the alias domain’s DNS to the same IP or proxy as the primary domain.
  4. Test: verify HTTP→HTTPS, www↔non-www, and alias→primary all resolve to a single canonical URL for every page.
     

Don’t confuse alias domains with DNS ALIAS/ANAME

Some DNS providers offer ALIAS/ANAME records or CNAME flattening to let an apex domain behave like a CNAME. This is a DNS-level technique to point one hostname to another. It is not the same as a hosting-level alias domain, which serves the same website under multiple domains. You can use both together: DNS to route, redirects to canonicalize.
 

Common mistakes to avoid

  • Leaving alias pages indexable: no 301 in place leads to duplicate content and diluted link equity.
  • Inconsistent linking: internal links mixing alias and primary hosts confuse crawlers; standardize on the primary.
  • Partial redirects only on the homepage: always redirect all paths, not just /.
  • Mixed protocols/hosts: redirect chains like HTTP→alias→HTTPS→primary slow crawlers; aim for a single 301 hop.
     

How this relates to Sedo

Securing the right names is the foundation of any alias-domain strategy. On the Sedo marketplace, you can discover brand variants, country-code TLDs, and premium names that fit your portfolio. Not ready to merge them yet? Park unused domains with Sedo to keep them active and visible until you implement redirects to your primary site.

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