Domain Forwarding to One Site - ok?

[MarkPearson]

I want to know if I point several domains with some traffic that I own to my new business website www.rosesbydesign.com

Will this affect my search engine rating?

Is it good or bad practice?

Or does it have no effect what so ever?

[The_JinJ]

Lots of people do this - they buy domain names with related key words in them (www.roses.co.uk - you wish ;)) - I notice a lot when using Google that urls pop up that are just redirects so can't do any harm :)
Who are your domains bought with? I use 123-reg and it's just a case of entering the redirected URL in the Control Panel.

[MarkPearson]

Hi Neil,

I use godaddy for all domain.

I did not think it was a problem and can only benefit the site listing/traffic.

As long as google don't penalised for this.

[WelshPixels]

As an ex-web designer for Admiral Insurance I was lucky enough to get to discuss this issue with both a Google rep and one of the biggest SEO companies in the UK.

As far as search engines are concerned, there is very little to gain by having multiple domain names redirected to a main site. The main benefits are to stop your competitors from using certain words/trademarks/slogans etc.

When Google for instance finds a redirect it won't bother listing the domain being redirected but will list the site its being redirected to.

If done correctly (with htaccess and 301 redirects) multiple domain names will do no harm to your rankings at all. This is the method that the big domain name companies such as 1-2-3 use).

However if you have a number of domain names pointing to the same web space they will label it either domain spamming or duplicate content. This is not good and either your ranking will go down the drain or you may get your site banned altogether.

[paulcreedy]

My understanding is that it depends on the ranking of the page linking to you and the method used.

Ideally if you want a good page rank on your site, you only have sites linking to you that have a good page ranking also. Getting sites to link to you that have a page rank of 0 is not a good idea.

However purchasing several similar domains and pointing them to the same website is quite legitimate. Having different domains pointing to the same webspace is different from using those domains on webspace of their own, and then linking them to your main site.

[DuaneJackson]

The bottom line is

1) make sure they do actually REDIRECT to the proper site, and not just be alternative domains names for the same content.

2) use a 301 status(permanent) redirect, not a 302 (temporary) redirect. You can use http://www.keyone.co.uk/tools-source-viewer.asp to check the status of any page/domain.

3) make sure, as far as you can, then anyone that linsk to you links to the main domain, not one of your redirected ones.

Follow those 3 rules and there will be no negative impact on your rankings/page rank.