In the meantime, I am considering forwarding the new domain name via the registrars forwarding service which uses a 301 or 302 redirect, to related site section on the old domain. Note: There most likely will *not* be any links to the domain from other sites and any traffic will come in from URL "type-in" traffic.
Here are my questions/concerns:
- If I use a 301 or 302 redirect, will I run into any search engine penalties when I do split off and develop the new domain? Will I have trouble getting the new domain pages ranked due to the previous forwarding?
- Will the existing content on the old domain, the redirection destination, be penalized from a duplicate content standpoint if a search engine does happen to crawl the site starting from the new forwarded domain name?
- Which redirect code would be better to use in this case, 301 or 302?
Any other tips or warnings would be appreciated.
Thanks.
In your scenario, a 302 would be suggested. The problem is, there have been many reported issues with the SE's and 302s so I wouldn't risk whatever may occur.
You wouldn't do a 301 in this instance. Since you plan on launching under that new domain at a later date, you don't want to tell the bots that the resource has 301 Moved Permanently. You would want to return a 302 Found which means...
The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection might be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests. This response is only cacheable if indicated by a Cache-Control or Expires header field.
But again, I'd keep that domain dormant and unseen until you are ready to launch. But, that's just me, I like to take the conservative approach. ;)
