Redirecting?

[yilduz]

Is it a good idea to redirect domains you're not using to your main websites?

I have a .info domain that gets a lot more traffic than I would have ever thought, but I can't think of anything to develop it as. It seems like a good idea to redirect that traffic to something else, but other things that have seemed like good ideas apparently aren't, so I figured I'd ask.

What do you say?

 

[Rich]

I do redirects(from old directory names) to a fresh dev, it is a good idea if they're similar names or target the same audience. You want the traffic to your developed site, but it would be silly to point a name like infants.info to buycars.com :imho:

I say go for it, what's there to lose except a little parking rev? good luck!

 

[yilduz]

It makes sense. I just wanted to make sure doing something like that didn't make bad things happen. People keep telling me about SEO mistakes I make and stuff like that.

How does the info from the redirect show up in awstats?

 

[shig]

You may want to research more if you have a lot of backlinks. I think there is a specific way to redirect...."the google way"

 

[Rich]

How does the info from the redirect show up in awstats?

I've never used awstats, I'm buzzed right now and got lost for 20 minutes looking at stats I looked under referrers, would it be "Direct address / Bookmarks"? anyone?

You may want to research more if you have a lot of backlinks. I think there is a specific way to redirect...."the google way"

I read somewhere you should use 301 permanent, I just point to my host and use cpanel redirect.

 

[MicroGuy]

From my experience redirects are only useful if the traffic is somewhat targeted for the destination site. If you redirect people looking for jewelry to a Gatlinburg hotel directory, you will get a very high bounce rate. IMO.

 

[npcomplete]

I did this for about 12 years on one of my sites, with hundreds of other domains pointing to the site (all related to the site topic). The results were fantastic.

What I did was program my dns servers to point to the actual IP of the website target rather than redirect. This is a great way to grow traffic. I then used a perl script on the target host to flip everything back to the target site domain name since I wanted people to remember the target, not how they got there. For legal reasons (Intellectual Property issues) I finally killed the perl script and now the domains appear just the way the user types them in.

I am now doing the same thing with IDN, branding my site in other languages like Chinese, Russian, etc. I am less optimistic with this approach since the main site is in English, and the automatic translation tools... er ummm... suck.

 

[yilduz]

I also read somewhere that the 301 permanent thing is best.

MicroGuy, that does make sense. In this particular case, the .info is a 4-letter domain so it really doesn't mean anything, though.

npcomplete - I'm happy to know that it does give good results. I'll do this from now on with related domains. I don't know how to do all of that stuff though, so I just made a redirect code with PHP.