I have a domain/site I have set up. I also own 4 other domains that have great keywords in them relative to the site. Whats the best solution SEO wise pointing them to the main site/domain and whats the best practise. I know I can use the Cpanel CP to do it and .htacess files. But I don't think this is the best SEO wise. Any advice would be great.
The BEST option is to build unique content at each of the domains, and then interlink them where appropriate. The 2nd best thing is to 301 redirect ALL of the other domains to your main domain... However this is NOT going to help from an SEO perspective if those domains have no inbound links. Simply redirecting a domain with keywords in it to another domain when the domain being redirected has no inbound links has ZERO SEO benefit. Even if they have inbound links, only the link text of those inbound links will help the URL that is the target of the redirect. The fact that the domain has keywords in it is worthless after it's redirected. Those domains won't even exist in Google's index if they are 301 redirected. IMO if you don't plan to build out unique sites at each of the domains or if those extra domains don't have inbound links, you are better off sticking to the single site. You're wasting your time (and money) hosting those domains only to redirect them w/ no inbounds...