Redirecting multiple domains and SEO impact

IP-funnel approach or straight 301

[Tastatura]

Lately I have seen a lot of discussion about redirects and impact to SEO, particularly 301 redirect discussions, however I haven’t seen any (comparison) discussion about IP-funnel technique.

In scenario where you have few, say 5, domains where name (second-level) is the same but TLD is different, or you have various (mis)spellings of domain name, and you want to point them all to the same content on same ‘main’ site.

what is best approach to do so with regards to current SEO understanding? (avoid duplicate, spam, etc. ‘penalties’).

By straight 301 approach I mean – serve 301 redirect from all domains and point it to the main site

By IP-funel approach I mean – Multiple domains are pointed (forwarded) to a feeder site, that is hosted and have robots file and ‘optimized’ (title, description, etc) index file with meta refresh and no index statement. This feeder site will serve 301 and redirect to main site.

CliffsNotes:What are advantages/disadvantages of using IP-funnel approach vs straight 301 redirect? Or is there a better way to achieve the objective?

[bill]

Your funnel approach would result in duplicate content, wouldn't it, or do I misunderstand you? You can certainly hold multiple related domains, but it's common to 301 them to the main site.

[Tastatura]

Hi Bill,
I can’t take credit for coming up with “IP-funnel” approach – I read it on some web site when I was doing research.

The way I understand it, one of the primary objectives of the funnel approach is to eliminate dup content – i.e. preventing indexing of multiple website domain names that point to the same content on some (main site) server. The funnel approach deals with that by pointing ‘extra’ domains to ‘feeder’ site (which has index file, robots file, etc) which in turn forwards to main site (huh, clear as mud…I am trying to paraphrase and stay within TOS).

[bill]

OK, I think it's a bit clearer now. It sounds like off-domain doorway pages [webmasterworld.com] to me. That might be a bit of a risky tactic and the reason why you don't see many people talking of it.