Complementary Domain

[LucasLopes]

Hi guys,

I have the following situation I would like some help. Because my client is in Brazil, I will make up fictional names so it's easier to understand. My client is a shoe store whose domain is mangabeira.com. That is the brand name and will always be the main domain and reference of the website.

We were offered the domain shoes.com. There is no intention of changing the brand name or anything, but there would be a redirect that would send the user who to mangabeira.com. My question is how much impact would that complementary domain do to my SEO performance and how that redirect must be handled.

Thanks.

[Chris.Menke]

If the domain you were offered was actually shoes.com or a similar Brazilian  counterpart, I'd plan on doing good, solid SEO on the mangabeira.com site, keep it updated, employ social, and work to continue developing it as a brand.  With the other site, I'd work on developing it as a very separate social/lifestyle platform/forum that links out appropriately to your site and others within the general theme.

If you weren't going to do anything to develop the shoes.com domain further, I think that rather than just 301 the whole domain, I'd add a few appropriately placed links on shoes.com that point back to appropriate pages on mangabeira.com and just let it rest for a while.

A 301 of the shoes.com domain to the mangabeira.com home page will likely help with PR of you homepage but it may not spread as much link equity to the rest of your site as you may like.

[LucasLopes]

Awesome. Thank you very much Chris.