301 Re-directing 'empty' domains

[SO_UK]

Hello,

My client had purchased a few domains and 301 re-directed them, pointing to our main website. As far as I am aware the 'empty domains' are brand related but no content has ever been displayed on them, and I doubt they have much authority.

The issue here is that we took a dive in ranking for our main keyword, I had a look on ahrefs and found the below:

|

www.empty-domain/our-keyword

| 30 | 19 | 1 | fb 0
G+ 0
in 4 | REDIRECT 301 TO

www.main-domain/our-keyword

| 8 Feb '175 d |

The ranking dip happened at the same time as the re-direct was re-discovered / re-crawled.

Could the 'empty' URL in question been causing us any issues?

I understand that this is terrible practice for 301 redirects, I was hoping someone in the community could shed light on any possible solution for this.

[GastonRiera]

Hello there!

Were you sure that were really empty domains? Have you checked whether had history of any kind with web.archive.org?

What i'm understanding from your question is that the rankings were hurt just when the redirection impacted and indexed.
Solution? do not redirect those domains to that kw. Just make a 301 to the home, root domain to root domain:
empty-domain.com->main-domain.com

Also, have you checked for any other reason for that drop in rankings? Bad backlinks, an increase in your competitors authority, bad own optimization or better competitors's optimization, or any other?

Best luck.
GR.