Domain forwarding is to let you point your domain name to another home page or web site location. You owns several domain names for your business to protect your branding. You want to make sure that even if your customers misspell your domain name or domain extension they would still be able to get to your website. Domain forwarding can be done easily through most domain registrars such as Godaddy.com or Network Solutions. However, the domain forwarding features that most domain registrars provide is actually 302 redirect (temporary redirect).
If you consider domain forwarding for SEO, you should do 301 redirect (permanent redirect), which Google always recommend webmasters to do. By creating a 301 redirect when the spiders crawl you web page they will know that you really only have one website. This way, search engine won’t get confused. It’s always safer to do 301 redirect than 302 redirect regarding SEO.
When you do 301 redirect, your domain names need to be routed from the domain name registrar to a hosting account – from the hosting account you’ll need to set a Permanent Redirect to your main site. It will cost more, but it is worth doing this 301 redirect domain forwarding for SEO.
One more thing that you want to do 301 redirect than domain forwarding (302 redirect) is to carry the link juce. A 302 Redirect is a temporary redirect and passes 0% of link juice. Matt Cutts states as follows regarding 301 redirect for link juce and page rank.
301 Redirect lose a tiny link juce and pag rank, but tiny…., while you lose everything in link juice and page rank if yoou do domain forwarding (302 redirect).
If you learn more about 301 redirect, please go to 301 redirect SEO page.
