(Entry was posted by Neil Cheesma on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 06/28/2018).

Park or redirect?

If creating a .de and also registering the .com to ensure the domain name is registered - is it best to park the .com or to redirect .com to .de (there won`t be two lots of content at the moment - simply German language version of content)

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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

Michael Martinez: Alias the domain. Do not simply park or redirect.
Paul Thompson: Definitely would not recommend aliasing the domain - you`ll be creating a nightmare of duplicate content issues and splitting ranking authority of incoming links.A 301-redirect is exactly what you want in this case.
Michael Martinez: No it does not work that way. To the search engines the alias domains are not there. I have used aliases for over a decade. Never had an issue.
Ammon Johns: Michael Martinez I have to agree with Paul Thompson on this one given the details of Neil Cheesman`s question. The .com was bought solely to protect it against being bought by someone else and prevent confusion. They don`t want it to `work` and be something people can get used to using. This is precisely what a 301 is for - to tell user-agents NOT to use the one URL and to update any bookmarks or records to use the other domain.
Paul Thompson: Yea, I think Martin has alias domains and redirects exactly backwards.
Ammon Johns: There`s usually method to his madness, even when I disagree with the method. I think he simply misunderstood that the registration of the .com was a defensive maneuver, and they`d rather people used (and remembered) the .de domain.
Michael Martinez: If you alias the domain you get the redirect without having to allocate hosting resources. There is absolutely no risk of duplicate content. Aliasing is the correct way to manage this. I have managed alias domains for over a decade. You set it and forget it.