When to Use Domain Forwarding

Having a web site with a popular name is a great way to gather residual web traffic with minimal effort. Unfortunately, most people don't realize that they can double this effect through the practice of domain forwarding, which is a grossly underused and highly effective tactic that has many uses.

Domain forwarding is also known as URL forwarding. It is a practice often utilized by advanced webmasters, but can be easily done by anyone with a web hosting account, a web site and basic technical knowledge.

The following information outlines the process of using domain forwarding, including how it is done and what benefits it provides for certain situations.

Changing the Name

Most people are quick to choose the name of their first web address because they are excited to begin their endeavors on the world wide web. Unfortunately, after the name has been chosen, there is no way to change it, so you'll have to live with it forever unless you buy a new domain name, or so is the common misconception. Obviously, the best way to avoid this would be to be very careful when selecting a domain name for your site. After the fact, the only option left is domain forwarding.

Some webmasters that are new to search engine optimization would simply buy a new domain name and transfer their site's pages to the new site. If the search engines have already indexed the pages on the old site, the new site will be hit with a duplicate content penalty and rank poorly after the files have been transferred over. To avoid this dire situation, you can use domain forwarding within your control panel.

Extra Domains

Some people purchase large volumes domain names that are related to a specific niche and do not use them for an extended period of time. After letting the domains sit for a while, they decide to utilize them, but they don't want to go through the hassle of building multiple sites. If you still want to utilize those extra domain names in your niche, you can forward them all to the main domain name and then begin advertising the extra domains across the internet.

Domain forwarding can also be a useful tactic if the extra domains contain keywords, as it is possible to get these domains to rank highly in search engines before forwarding them by simply adding a bit of content to them and waiting a few weeks. After each domain has built up a small amount of backlinks and PR, you can then forward these domains to the main site to increase search engine traffic for a short period of time and utilize the additional domains without having to completely construct all of the sites.

URL Redirection

URL redirection is very similar to domain forwarding, except instead of forwarding the entire domain, you can forward a specific page on a domain to another page within the same domain. This is incredibly useful if you've recently moved content or rearranged the structure of your site. URL redirection and domain forwarding are two tactics that every webmaster should learn and utilize at some point in their career.