Does forwarding parked URLS have any impact on search engine rankings?

A client asked me the following question today regarding domain forwarding:

“We have other ‘clientname’ relevant domain names, and I’m curious about pointing them at clientname.co.uk. Would that have a negative effect on SEO? I have heard opinions on both sides, some people say it will and some say it won’t.”

The following circumstances would normally apply when forwarding parked URLs to another website:

1. Avoid the use of domains that contain adult content such as porn or drug related words.

2. If it’s a brand new domain with no history there will be no impact, either positive or negative, unless you start building back links to the parked domain.

3. If the domain has been used before on a site that has dubious back links, has been blacklisted for spam or dropped from Google’s index for any reason then there would be no point forwarding it to a trusted site.

4. If a domain name has a clean history and some good back links then it can bring some targeted traffic to a site but it is unlikely to affect its rankings.

5. If there is a website already on the domain you are thinking of forwarding from, then it may be more beneficial to leave the site up and just link to the site you were going to forward to. That way you could benefit from a link from a site with some PR in a related industry. This could have a beneficial impact on rankings but only as part of the overall linking campaign.

6. If you are planning to use any of the parked domains in the future, then it may be wise not to forward them to your main site as the use of temporary 302 redirects can be seen in a negative light.

7. For domains that will be forwarded permanently, a 301 redirect should be utilised.

Caroline Bell
SEO Advisor