301 redirects - yes or no ?

[rampzoid]

hi,
i'm hoping to 'point' some new domains to some webspace containing a 301 redirect htaccess file pointing to my main website (it is 'reasonably' listed in G).

Q1: i've read that this can be sometimes risky & not really to any advantage seo wise - is this true?

Q2: basically, does the htaccess file just redirect immediately without any reference to any other html file within the same directory - eg a page with <title> & <meta> info etc?

Q3: am i in the right part of the forum?

cheers.

[caveman]

A1: Done in reasonable quantity I've not seen any issues with this. It's not an SEO thing per se. You're simply redirecting traffic that's inbound to one domain and moving it to another. For example, 301-ing WonkyWidget.com to WonkyWidgets.com.

A2: You are correct that when done in htaccess, the server immediately redirects the broswer to the target domain. No "on-page code" from files on the domain are involved, when executed properly.

A3: And yes you're in the right part of the forum, as this is essentially a technical side of marketing, i.e., being smart about capturing near-identical type-in traffic, typo traffic, etc, that if you don't grab, almost certainly someone else will.

;-)

[g1smd]

I grab .com - .net - .org - .co.uk - .eu for various domains, both hyphenated and non-hyphenated, and the most-likely common mis-spellings.

The whole lot gets a site-wide redirect to the canonical form.

It's been instructive to use one form in a limited offline advertising campaign and see how many typed that version in.