Should I Re-direct Domains to Internal Pages on Money Site

[Prime85]

I have an ecommerce site that is fully built out with thousands of products.

I own many industry related domains for the products that i sell.  Many of these domains are sitting unused.

I started to think that it would beneficial if i 301 redirect (at the registrar level) these domains to their SPECIFIC subcategories on my main money site.

For example, i sell sporting goods and my main website is buysportinggoods.com

I also own the following domains: basketballoutlet.com & baseballequipmentstore.com & footballpads.com

Would it be wise or foolish (and potentially cause a Google penalty) if i did the following:

• Point basketballoutlet.com to buysportinggoods.com/basketballs
• Point baseballequipmentstore.com to buysportinggoods.com/baseball
• Point footballpads.com to buysportinggoods.com/football

Please let me know your thoughts or experiences with similar situations.

Thanks!

[GlobeRunner]

When you say "many" domains, I'm not sure how many you're talking about. Generally speaking, if it's over about 50 domains then you may run into issues with Google, as I've seen penalties for redirecting too many domains.

Also, keep in mind that redirecting a domain won't magically make that page rank any better or help it at all. If the keyword domain has previous history and links, then it could potentially help--but otherwise it won't. When it comes to domains, you're going to be better off actually setting up a site on that domain than just redirecting it to an internal page. There may still be some type-in traffic, but most likely not with the examples you've given.

The best thing to do is, in fact, to redirect it to the most appropriate page on your site--but don't expect it to help any when it comes to rankings. And, if you redirect too many, it may actually hurt your site.

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

It will not make any beneficial difference whatsoever. The reason is that if domain is redirected on a dns level, that domain will not be ranked at all. So, unless you have an actual domain with content, it will be useless for you.

P.S. What you might consider doing is creating some type of splash pages for those domains with some unique information and then have a link to main website related section. However, again, since there is not gonna be really any content, those domains won't rank, even if they are full match domain.

Cheers!

[Andrew_Birkitt]

From my understanding if you are using domains just for the sake of redirecting them they don't help much and can even hurt your rankings. This used to work years ago but in this day and age if the domain has had no content or gained any real value in the eyes of the search engines why would you redirect it.

[Prime85]

Hey Everyone,

Thanks for the replies.

My goal is not to increase rankings at all.  My goal is to simply point people who may have found these domains somehow while doing their searches to the most relevant page on my main site that has everything they were looking for when doing their search.

So using the same example, if someone is looking for the place to buy the best shoulder pads for their kids football league, and they are all the way back on page 9 of google and stumbled on footballpads.com my thought would be that when they click that, it takes them to the specific page on my main site (buysportinggoods.com/footballpads)

Make sense?  Still advise against it?

[DmitriiK]

Well, those domains are not gonna be even on 9th page, more like on 159th.