Parked Domains Vs. 301 Redirect

[charlesleo]

Hi guys. I'm concerned about my rankings - in particular Google. I've tried to search for this topic but it is very confusing.

 

Right now, I have a main website in top 10 for several different categories.

 

I also have several other domain names registered (not hosted). TCH has parked these other domain names to my main address.

 

So when I go to these other domain names, it points me back to my main website. However, the other domain names all stay the same throughout instead of becoming the main.com Additionally, what scares me is that my Google Pagerank bars still show all of these other ones as being PR 4.

 

So from what I've read, I'm a little bit afraid that my Pagerank is getting split between these other domain names - I could be wrong. Or am I? Is this no longer an issue?

 

Would it be best to take all these other domain names, go back to my registrar, and have them 301 redirect those domains to my main website so that they all read main?

 

 

Thanks,

 

Charles

[TCH-Bruce]

Sorry don't know the SEO ramifications but I have 6 domains parked on our company domain and it hasn't hurt my page rankings on the main domain.

[charlesleo]

If you don't mind me asking - what is your Google ranking and for what search term? I'm not trying to question your integrity so please don't take it the wrong way - just trying to determine other factors which may result in your current standings (ie. - is it an obscure search term.)

 

For mine, I'm around #6 (but would like #1). The engines have been acting very flaky for the past two months and it has every SEO expert questioning what is going on. I'm just trying to protect myself from future dropping.

[MikeJ]

I am in no way an SEO expert. But if you have a lot of links going to the parked domains, most likely your PR will suffer. Best to 301 redirect them to the main site so all of the links boost your main sites PR.

 

But that's all speculation.

[TCH-Bruce]

Our company has many competitors doing the same thing. On our keyword phrase we used to come up number 2 now we are down to number 8. But it had nothing to do with the parked domains since we don't promote them and they never appear in the search engines that I've found. And we have a current page rank of 4.

[charlesleo]

Have you all noticed a dance with your site as well lately?

 

What I found really strange was that I typed this post, then typed in a related search term into Google 30 seconds later, and this thread was already number 2 on the Google search term list. Maybe it's just my imagination, but things seem to be getting a lot faster...

 

*******

All these 'experts' keep saying to use a 301 over a parked domain from what I've read and it is driving me nuts. I'm not advertising my other domain names, but somehow they've managed to to be found in other engines (including Google) I wouldn't think it could do too much damage if I'm already in the top 6 - but i wonder if a 301 could push it higher... Of course changing all these would run me $100 or so...

 

Not a fun thought.