I currently have a soundclick page which I am trying to sell rap beats on. If you are not familiar with soundclick think of it as a myspace page. My domain is http://www.soundclick.com/heathwaiverapbeats i want to optimize my page for 3 keywords Rap Beats Instrumental Beats Free Beats so I purchased the domain http://www.freeinstrumentalrapbeats.com and have it 301 redirected toward the soundclick. I have done this solely for SEO purposes because I feel that optimizing for freeinstrumentalrapbeats would be easier than optimizing my personal soundclick page. I have had an experienced internet entrepenuer tell me that I am abusing the 301 redirect and might suffer penalties from Google. He also said that I would have an easier time just optimizing for http://www.soundclick.com/heathwaiverapbeats I wanted to get some other opinions before I really started my SEO endeavor. What do people think? Has anybody here had experience with this? Thanks in advance. Looking forward to everyones thoughts.
It should not be a problem. I once bought a domain, brought it to PR2 and then decided to consolidate it with another PR1 domain that had a better title. I used a 301 redirect and the PR1 became PR2 (inherited the PR from the redirected domain). To my knowledge, Google does not penalize the 301 redirect, they actually recommend it in several places.
I would listen to your friend. Though Google doesn't penalize you for 301 redirects (unless you are using sneaky redirects to implement cloaking which violates their guidelines), Google will sometimes ignore 301 redirects when you are buying and redirecting other domains if they notice you are not keeping the old domains up and running after you purchase them and are instead immediately 301 redirecting them after the registration changes hands. The domain you purchased (http://www.freeinstrumentalrapbeats.com) has very few back links (49 according to Yahoo! Site Explorer). 301 redirectings it to your http://www.soundclick.com/heathwaiverapbeats URL likely accomplishes very little toward helping you rank for those 3 keyword phrases unless the inbound links to http://www.freeinstrumentalrapbeats.com 1) are followed and 2) have those 3 keyword phrases in the link text of the inbound links pointing to http://www.freeinstrumentalrapbeats.com. You'll get some PR from the followed links pointing to http://www.freeinstrumentalrapbeats.com... the few inbound links to http://www.freeinstrumentalrapbeats.com that contain the 3 keyword phrases will help your URL rank for their corresponding keyword phrases. But as your friend said, your time and money can usually be better spent optimizing and building links to your main site rather than looking for shortcuts and gimmicks like buying and redirecting other domains.
WHy do you use 301 redirect if you have no rankings for the keywords? Having your keyword inside domain will not bring top 10 rankings. It can only help like 2% in achiving top 10. The best way to optimize is to start building links for the original page.
Yup, 301 redirects won't hurt you. We have used them a couple of times in the past when moving pages and structure around. All the PR, etc.. will transfer through the redirect.
Thanks for your thoughts.. I don't have to many backlinks right now because I just purchased the domain and started building links a week ago. I purchased it with the intention of focusing my whole link building campaign around freeinstrumentalrapbeats.com instead of soundclick.com/heathwaiverapbeats I am doing this because I though it would be stronger than optimizing for the soundclick. The backlinks that I have for freeinstrumentalrapbeats will all be dofollow and will have Rap Beats, Instrumental Beats and Free Beats as anchor text.