So let me tell you about a little experience I had recently. Silly me. A client wanted to get rid of an old domain name as part of a website resign, and simply forward it over to another URL on a different site that they own.

The business purpose made sense, they simply didn't want to have to update two websites any longer.

Fair, however, I brought up the SEO considerations. Domain name companyX.com was on page 1 of Google for some very important keywords/queries.

Well, I thought, Google should leave that old companyX.com that we're forwarding over to companyY.com/X indexed for at least 4-6 weeks. After all, that's the previous experience I'd always had in these situations.

However, almost immediately after we launched the clients new website and forwarded the old vanity domain to the interior page of the new website, the vanity domain (companyX.com) was completely gone/de-indexed.

Client started freaking. Understandably. But the good news (better long term for SEO), is that the new companyY.com/X page was already on page 2, and rising.

The ideal situation would have been, and should be, to leave companyX.com up, with all of it's glorious content, and wait until companyY.com/X outranks it before pulling it down or changing it in any way.

Punch line SEO experts: Google doesn't like domain forwards because the content isn't actually there anymore.

Have a great day!

Paul Hickey has created and grown businesses via digital strategy and internet marketing for more than 10 years. His sweet spot is using analytics to design and build websites and grow the audience and revenue of businesses via SEO/Blogging, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Social Media Content Marketing and Email Marketing. The part that he’s most passionate about is quantifying next marketing actions based on real data.