When I forward one domain to another, which one is crawled?

[Lynn Terry]

First, you want to make sure you do a Permanent 301 Redirect.

Then update as many inbound links as you can to also point to Domain2.

Domain2 is the one that will display in the SERPs (search engine results pages)

[Lynn Terry]

I mixed that up - my bad. The domain that is just a redirect is the one that does NOT get indexed in the SERPs. The domain it is redirected TO is the one that holds the pagerank and rankings.

What's the purpose of the 2 domains, by the way? Why the 2nd domain forwarding to the website?

[Lynn Terry]

I would advise against it. The domain name itself carries very little weight in the ranking criteria. Instead, focus on relevant inbound links with your keywords in the anchor text.

Read http://www.seofaststart.com (free download)

Consider that selfstartersweeklytips.com ranks #1 for "learn internet marketing"

And clicknewz.com ranks in the top 10 for "internet marketing blog"

Neither are keyword-rich domains.

[carlos123]

You know I was wondering a couple of days ago if anyone ever did some real research on whether the SEO wisdom being thrown around over the internet is any good and backed up by real examples and...well...you just gave two excellent examples Lynn about how the domain name seems to be less important than one might think.

Great examples Lynn. Thanks for sharing.

Carlos

[Lynn Terry]

There's a lot of crap floating around about SEO.

Grab the free download in my last reply - it's the model I use, and Dan Thies is a highly respected SEO. Good stuff!