Is forwarding one domain to another good or bad for SEO? Does it make sense to build links for both domains? Thanks in advance.
It makes no sense to build links for both domains if you are only going to use one. If you are switching from an old domain to a new domain, you should use a 301 redirect.
most of the time, it is only useful when you do a 301 from your old domain to a better domain, for example if you are targeting the keyword: new york restaurants and your current website is restony.com, if you buy www.newyorkrestaurants.net then doing a 301 to that new domain will increase your rankings because the domain is an exact match of your targeted keywords.. there are a few other scenarios when a 301 maybe useful, like trying to move because of a penalized website, or choosing a domain because it is more brandable or older... if you are not familiar with 301's it simply means: "hi google, this is my old website and here is my new website, i changed my domain name". however if you are going to build links for both domains, there is no point in forwarding one to another, just keep them as standalone separate websites and target different keywords with each domain. good luck
Most web hosts use iframe's to implement Domain Forwarding. This is a BAD idea from an SEO perspective. Framing your new site under your old domain serves no useful purpose from an SEO perspective. Credit for the inbound links to the forwarded domain will NOT be transfered to the destination URL. So your new, destination URL will gain no benefit from the forwarded domain. If you have an old domain and you want to stop using it but send your users and crawlers to the new domain (and have your new, destination URL get credit for inbound links and the associated links to the old URL) then you need to 301 redirect each URL on the old site to the URL on the new site whose content most closely resembles the content at the old URL.
Thanks for your replies. This is what's going on. We are not switching from an old domain to a new domain. Site #1(the old one) has lots of backlinks and getting a good traffic. Site #2(new one) has absolutely no backlinks and forwards to the #1. We want to optimize the site #1 for SE and use the site#2 for G's local results. What do you think about it?
Run them as two different sites or forget about trying to build links for the new domain. When you forward a domain, you are basically telling google only one of the domains is being used. You will not get any keyword benefit for the new domain, if that is what you are asking. Redirecting multiple domains to another domain can get you a penalty in some cases when it looks like you are trying to rig the SERPS.
It's not good for SEO because the link that's being forwarded will have no content weight in Google's eyes.