Do or don't —forward a parked domain to a live website?

[Technical_Contact]

Hi all, I'm new to SEO and excited to see the launch of this forum. I've searched for an answer to this question but haven't been able to find out.

I  "attended" two webinars recently regarding SEO. The above subject was raised in each one and the speakers gave a polar opposite recommendations. So I'm completely at a loss as to what to do with some domains that are related to a domain used on a live website that I'm working to improve the SEO on.

The scenario:

Live website at (fictitious) www.digital-slr-camera-company.com. I also have 2 related domain names which are parked with the registrar: www.dslr.com, www.digitalslr.com.

The question:

Is there any SEO benefit to be gained by pointing the two parked domains to the website at www.digitalcamercompany.com? If so, what method of "pointing" should be used?

Thanks to any and all input.

[StalkerB]

Hmm, I'll probably say one thing and someone will come along with the opposite again, lol.

Well, the only real advantage of forwarding the domain is for type in traffic. If it's a site that people would expect to be live they may just put it straight into the address bar and end up at your site. 301 redirecting that domain means that it won't appear in the search engines. Your new site won't really rank for the exact match domain you're forwarding.

You could also make an index.html/php page and meta refresh them to your main domain and that would allow the site to rank for exact match but still not really going to give you much benefit.

If the URL is awesome, consider putting some content up and sending it to your site via links, but otherwise I'd just forward them at the registrar.

[DanDeceuster]

There is SEO benefit to forwarding these domains if they have any incoming links. If so, a 301 redirect to your main domain could send some link juice and help rankings.

If these parked domains aren't even indexed by Google and have no links, then there is no SEO value in a 301 redirect because Google won't even know about it anyway. I would still do it as there is no harm that could be done, that's for sure.

I would recommend against doing any kind of meta refresh, as Google frowns upon those. Just 301 redirect the parked domains to your live website and it will either do nothing or help a little, but it can't hurt.

[Technical_Contact]

Thanks for the info. I didn't think there was any real benefit, but I wanted to make sure it wouldn't penalize the website.

[Technical_Contact]

Thanks for the reply. It confirms what I thought. I just wanted to get input from more experienced colleagues so I could make an informed decision.