Does redirect of domain alias help rankings?

[nosuchagency]

Yes... It iz I again ;o)

Here's one for you savy techies out there:

So, I've got a primary domain which is live, optimized and running smooooth. And then I've got a couple of misspelled domains as well (17 to be exact).

• Will it have an effect if I 301 those misspelled domains?
• What's Best Practice for several domain aliases?

Example.
Primary domain:  bryghusprojektet.dk
Alias domain 1: bryghusprojekt.dk (301 redirects to primary domain)
Alias domain 2: bryghus-projekt.dk (Hosting company infopage)
Alias domain 3: bryghus-projekter.dk (Not activated)

Regards.

[DanDeceuster]

Are any of these domains indexed? Do any of them have links to them? If they are neither indexed nor have any links, then redirecting them will do nothing as search engines don't know they exist anyway. The only value for you is with direct traffic. When people misspell your domain if you have all those possible misspellings redirect to you then they end up on your site no matter what. You also prevent competitors from taking something very close to your domain name and pretending to be you.

The only time this can have an effect is if you buy domains. If you go out and buy domains that are indexed with links to them and then 301 redirect all of them to your website then this is what is referred to as doorway pages. You are essentially buying pagerank. Google no like.

I have had success with a domain like mythings.com and buying mything.com and redirecting it and getting a good bump. But it was only one domain and it was very similar. If you go out and buy expired domains or high PR domains and redirect them all you can have trouble. But in your case, just redirecting a bunch of domains that are essentially invisible to search engines won't have any positive or negative effects.