I have recently purchased an identical .co.uk version of my domain name and created a forwarder to point all traffic directly towards my main domain which is a .com version of the same title. All my website files, back-links, directory listings and general SEO are all for the .com version and at current the .co.uk version has absolutely nothing done at all, since it was only purchased 24 hours ago. The only thing that I have done with it is to add it to my hosting package, create the forwarder to my .com and registered it with the 3 main webmaster tools applications. It has absolutely no files inside apart from the webamster tools verification files. Basically what I wanted to know is how you handle general SEO with a domain being used as mine is. This is something I have never done before so I was hoping someone could offer a little advise. - Do I need to create a sitemap? I know there are no files but will it follow on to the .com? - Is it worth doubling up all my directory listings under the same business name with the new url? The more I think about it the better it seems that I just leave the new domain alone and just leave it as it is. The main reason that I purchased this domain is to keep it safe from competitors and because I was finding a lot of searches coming through on my SEO reports for searches looking for my website under the .co.uk extension. I suppose Im using it as a safety net more than anything but after giving such a lot of attention to SEO on previouse business sites it seems strange to leave it alone. So I suppose my main question is how to optimize or do I need to optimize this domain, solely intended to remain as a permanent forwarder.
I'd stick to 301s, to the new site, and get some content there now; relevant pages where the index and 'section indexes' will be - that will give the SEs chance to focus on the new URLs before you take the Big Step. there's plenty of threads which advise on the details. But nothing is guaranteed with moving domains; the material you are moving may well suffer, at least for a while.
As said - the 301 is fine if your only interest is protecting the name. Although one thing you might consider for some benefit in SEO terms is building a blog on the new name which you can then use to provide deep links into your main site.