We have a decent keyword rich URL domain that's not being used - what to do with it?

[seanmccauley]

We're an ecommerce site and  we have a second, older domain with  a better keyword match URL than our main domain (I know, you may be wondering why we didn't use it, but that's beside the point now). It currently ranks fairly poorly as there's very few links pointing to it. However, the exact match URL means it has some value, if we were to build a few links to it.

What would you do with it:

1. 301 product/category pages to current site's equivalent page
2. Link product/category pages to current site's equivalent page
3. Not bother using it at all
4. Something else

[seanmccauley]

In the case of 1. Would we not be as well building these new links directly to our main site? My theory is that if we acquire links to our old site, lets say to page widgets.com/shoecleaner then use anchor text on that page 'shoecleaner' then we will have relevancy built into the  link juice passed( by it flowing through a relevant page on the old domain). This juice would be better than if we simply 301'd??

[AdiRste]

Option 1 will be your best bet by far.