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A H1 tag is still the recommended way by W3 to headline a page:

http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/Use_h1_for_Title

http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/headings

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#h-7.5.5

I still find that by following W3 recommendations it makes a good step in creating a well optimised page. Obviously you aren't going to rank by having a H1 tag alone, but it will always never harm the page to have a well crafted one. One thing I do recommend is having a different H1 tag to the Page Title.

Ditto, I think it is a very good idea. One additional thing I would do is create some sort of "Signup" form so you can collect details of people interested in purchasing once released you could then send a email to once you get the full page up and running.

Kind of opposite to what you said, which I have also had great success with, is when a product isn't made any more, don't delete it, however keep the page and put on it alternative versions of the widget. People still search for years old products.

One way to do it would be to redirect using a hash tag # as part of the redirect, now, these are not seen as a seperate page in the way a querystring might be, but a server won't usually pick up that it has the hash tag, they are client side only.

However you could use a bit of jQuery that looks for a hash value on pageload, and if it identifies one, spawns a modal saying "welcome to abc.com, we used to be zyx.com", I have used a plugin called jQuery BBQ for this: http://benalman.com/projects/jquery-bbq-plugin/

So for example, if using PHP you could using the following to redirect:

header("Location: http://www.example.com/#newdomain=1");

Then in your new site test for newdomain in jQuery BBQ using:

jQuery.bbq.getState("newdomain");

and if found spawn a modal.

Bit of both really, I have done a lot of domain purchases around converting key-phrases and redirecting to my main site to benefit from any type in traffic there is, there isn't a huge amount but if deffo pays for itself, I think that at the end of the day more than justifies the minimal effort required.

The next stage which I keep meaning to do when I find more spare time is build up simple sites around them instead of a simple redirect, there is one owner in a niche I work in that does this to excellent effect in both terms of conversions and SEO.