Domain Forwarding Help
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A friend of mine is a domainer and he wants to forward 21 parked niche specific domains to my site for extra type-in traffic. This will turn out to be 30 extra hits a day. Obviously, since these are parked domains, the SEO benefits are none, we just want the traffic.
My questions is how to do it.
These are his parked domains, and will not be redirected forever, is a 302 redirect the best plan here? He planned on just going into his hosting/domain admin and selecting "forward domain" -- is this ok too?
Also, he would prefer to forward these domains to a single domain he owns, and then forward that single domain he owns to my domain. So someone who types in one of these 21 domains will go
typindomain.com ---> hisredirectsite.com ---->mysite.com
any implications here?
What is the best option and how to do it?
Thanks
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Both Shane and Nakul gave some good advice, so I'll just add my 2 cents.
As your domain is new, this could have serious implications for your site and it's ability to rank. I can't say for certain it would hurt, but it sure would make it a likely candidate for an algorithmic penalty.
302s sound better than 301s to me, but even that many 302's redirecting to such a young site should throw up spam warnings galore at the Googleplex.
Additionally, adding the extra layer of his site...
typindomain.com ---> hisredirectsite.com ---->mysite.com
...might actually complicate things instead of making them better.
In the end, I think there might be easier ways to gain the same amount of traffic in a long-lasting, low risk way.
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"He is willing to redirect to just my site instead of through his. Do you think this decreases my chances of raising a flag?"
-Decrease or not, the chance of a red flag is significant either way. Seems like there are less risky ways to gain 30 visits/day.
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Many of his domains were at one point used as directory domains in which they all linked to each other. This was in 2003-2006. (I'm not sure if this qualifies as "parked")
They have all pretty much been parked since then.
Searching their "sitename.com" in google always gives me the particular site as the #1 result, so google knows.
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Just make sure any of these domains do not have any history in the Search engines. Check archive.org and check the SERPS, Open Site Explorer etc to make sure if they are/were unknown to the Search Engines. If that's the case, there's nothing to worry about.
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My domain is new. I have put up 13 articles on it over the past few months.
He is willing to redirect to just my site instead of through his. Do you think this decreases my chances of raising a flag?
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Is your site brand new or relatively old/established ? If it's relatively old/established, do you really care about the extra 30 uniques a day from 30 domains ? If it's a brand new site, relatively new(ish), and it does not have a link profile of it's own, I'd probably not do it. It just sounds scary.
However, going back to if you are established and have have strong domain authority, link profile, redirecting domains is not an issue. EG, Apple.com has tons of domains that redirect. Some of them have lots of history in the SERPS. Think of all kinds of mis-spell domains, trademark domains and so on. So whatever makes sense from a usability perspective, definitely do it.
In my opinion, it's a very clear, think line.
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Yes the traffic is related to my site. It is a fishing site and the forwarded domains are all fishing related type-ins.
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I agree with Shane- non converting traffic isn't beneficial, as well as the ip funneling/ domain funnel concept is on Penguin's radar. While not an immediate drop in rankings when big G hit 's the big shiny re-do button on Penguin you run the risk of flagged- or flogged as it were.
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Is this traffic that is actually expected to convert?
Then if so IMHO the risk could possibly pay off, as (not sure) but this might be a bad Idea post penguin....
Even though you are not trying to manipulate for rankings - just off the top of my head this seems like a bad idea and possibly a red flag to the algo - especially if done all at once.
I am not fully sure on this, so look forward to others responses.
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