Multiple Domains (CNAMEs) in a Single Marketo Instance

[John_Clark1]

Some businesses using Marketo find it necessary to use multiple domains in their instance.  This allows them to have some of their landing pages branded with one product or division within their business, or even another company name altogether.  As long as you control both of the domains you want to add to your Marketo instance, then you can add as many as you'd like.

The article below will walk you through setting up the additional CNAMES, but I want to take a look at the most common question I get about this process.

"How do I choose which CNAME to create the Landing Page under?"

This question is misleading, because when you add additional CNAMES to your instance you aren't compartmentalizing which pages get created or placed in which spaces.  Adding more CNAMES doesn't build a whole new room for you to make and store landing pages.  You're only cutting a new door into the same room where you landing pages live already.  This makes it so there are multiple pathways to get to all of the pages in your instance.

Basically, once your IT team creates the new CNAME and points it to your Marketo instance (accountstring.mktoweb.com), just like they did with the first one, then you'll add it into Admin as a domain alias, and all of your pages will be available from that CNAME as well as the original and any other aliases already set up.

Like this:

(Original CNAME) pages.mydomain.com/MyPageName.html
(New Alias)            info.otherdomain.com/MyPageName.html

Or this:

pages.cakes.com/CakeSurvey.html

smallerpages.cupcakes.com/CakeSurvey.html

Is this article helpful ?

YesNo

You don't choose a CNAME, when creating the page.  All pages are created under the default/original CNAME, but they're all available from all Aliases as well.  Both of the urls above will take you to the same page, because both of the CNAMES are pointed to your Marketo instance (the room where all your pages are stored).

The choice comes when you decide which url to publish in your emails and give to your leads.  By handing out the url you want leads to use, you can decide which one they see, and which one they pass on to their friends and coworkers. The others urls will still exist, but if you never tell anyone about them then nobody will ever know.

https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Add+Additional+Landing+Page+CNAMEs

[Anonymous]

This really has me thinking about ways to use this to brand, or make distinctions between product lines.  Thanks!

Which makes me wonder:  Is it possible to have a 301 redirect between CNAMEs for landing pages?  I'm thinking of cases where a product or brand is subsetted?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi John,

Still, some important features are missing. I have summarized them here :

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Do you think having multiple domains for landing pages would have a negative impact on SEO?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

No it won't by itself. It depends how you use it.

Let say you have various web sites for your company, one per country with various languages, differing by the first level :

• mycompany.com (English)
• mycompany.fr (French)
• mycompany.es (Spanish)
• ...

You may publish landing pages in each languages to each of these domains, each LP will contribute to SEO for each domain. They will be in distinct subdomains of their respective domains, but Google considers sub-domains as sub-directories, so this has no negative impact.

Avoid publishing the exact same LP (same content, same language) in 2 different domains : it will be considered as duplicate content and this will be bad.

Of course,  all this supposes that your LP meta data is correctly filled in and your templates comply with SEO rules.

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Thanks G. I'm looking at two completely different domains. So I'll probably need to set-up another LP solution. No big deal since Marketo LPs are a bit cumbersome anyway.

Cheers!

[Alexandra_Maes3]

Hi there, I came across this post because the company I'm working for will soon change names. We're thus looking into buying all possible domains.

For SEO purposes, but also to best manage this in Marketo

Would you say it is best practices to redirect:

• mycompany.fr (French) to mycompany.com/fr?
• mycompany.es (Spanish) to mycompany.com/es?
• ...

Or the other way around?

Why would you use mycompany.fr or why mycompany.com/fr or does it not make a difference for SEO and/or in Marketo?

[SanfordWhiteman]

You can't do those redirects in Marketo, because Landing Pages are served directly from the root of your LP domain, not a subfolder (deeper path).

[Dan_McGinn3]

Hi John (and Marketo Community),

We followed your instructions and had a new CNAME created for our second brand. So now we have the following:

go.brand1.com as our domain name

go.brand2.com as a domain alias

However, when I create a landing page and replace the URL link text with go.brand2.com/page1, I receive an error - 404 page not found. The error page is a Marketo page though.

Any advice?

Thanks

-Dan

[SanfordWhiteman]

You must provide

1. Your actual hostnames, not fake ones (btw you shouldn't use domains you don't own as examples; the literal SLD "example" -- example.com, example.net -- is standardized for this purpose)

2. Screenshots of your Alias setup

[Dan_McGinn3]

Hi Sanford,

Appreciate the quick response. Here's some background - my company is in the midst of a consolidation of two brands from an operations standpoint - We are moving to a single Salesforce.com and Marketo instance. That said, we are keeping the two brands separate for the foreseeable future - both have strong name/brand equity and serve two different, but complimentary market needs. We want to use a single instance of Marketo to serve up content for both brands so we need to be able to create landing pages branded for both (we own both):

1. go.patheon.com (Legacy)

2. go.fisherclinicalservices.com (New)

I had IT create a new CNAME: 

go.fisherclinicalservices.com > patheon.mktoweb.com

Here is the Alias:

Let me know if you need more details.

Thanks a lot!

Dan