Best Way to Direct Traffic From Unused and Related Domains?

[mrengine]

What is the best and safest way to direct traffic from unused domains (about a dozen) that have traffic to a primary ecommerce website? The domains are indeed keyword rich and highly related to the product being sold on the ecommerce website. The thing is I do not want to do a straight 301 redirect because any negative seo clown could blast those with links, and I don't want to monitor inbound links for dozens of domains. I'm thinking just a short blurb of text and a couple related pics for each domain with a nofollow "example.com" non-keyword rich link pointed to the ecommerce website's homepage for each site along with a noindex tag for each domain being pointed. All the domains will be on the same IP as the main ecommerce website I want to point them to.

I don't want to hide what I am doing from Google, but want to forward the type-in traffic to the main ecommerce website so that we get the added sales. Is this risky for the main ecommerce website or should I use some different method (302 redirect, Javascript, etc.)?

[netmeg]

Me, I'd do the 301 and not worry about it.

[mrengine]

Thanks netmeg. Maybe I'm just being too paranoid. I may just point some of the domains using a 301 and monitor whether anything bad happens.

[aristotle]

What you're describing sounds similar to an old SEO technique in which someone would buy a high pagerank domain and redirect it (301) to their main site. The idea was to transfer the high pagerank of the purchased domain to the main site. Some people did this with more than one purchased domain. Actually, I think some people still do this, perhaps partly to get stray traffic as in your case.

But Google started "resetting" domains when they changed ownership. Also, there may have been some penalties imposed - I'm not sure about that.

[mrengine]

aristotle, what you described is precisely the trait I want to display. That's why I thought creating a landing page for each domain, a nofollow link without anchor text and noindex on the page would be "safer."

The domains I want to redirect to the main ecommerce website have always been owned by me, have no links pointing to them except for some sites that maintain archives of registered domains and a statistics site or two (like Alexa). There's no history on the domains other than loading blank pages (never any content on them).

It's terrible that I feel that I must jump through hoops just to direct a small amount of traffic from unused domains, but I don't trust Google's algorithm to interpret my actions as good.

I'll mull on this over the weekend and make some decisions next week. Thanks for your input netmeg and aristotle.

[mrengine]

To correct my post above (won't let me edit). The first sentence should read:

aristotle, what you described is precisely the trait I don't want to display.

That missing word is a big difference!

[EditorialGuy]

It's terrible that I feel that I must jump through hoops just to direct a small amount of traffic from unused domains, but I don't trust Google's algorithm to interpret my actions as good.

You don't need to jump through hoops, unless you have a tarnished history with Google.

301, pure and simple.

[netmeg]

I do it all the time; I have one client who ends up buying one or more of his competitors every year, and we end up using a 301 on the acquired domain. Never had a problem.

[aristotle]

mrengine
To me, this looks like a situation where you need to weigh the potential reward vs the potential risk. How does the handfull of visitors you might gain compare to the number you might lose if Google demotes or penalizes your site?

Every case is different, and most of us don't know the details of Google's algorithm and what it might or might not tolerate in any given case. It's also possible that Google could change the algorithm in the future to tighten down on this type of activity.

So given the uncertainties, my advice is to base your decision mainly on a consideration of risk vs reward.