You have built your website and optimized it for the search engines. Your niche is exceptionally good, and you have achieved some sure-enough quality back-links from highly noted related sites. In fact, you are starting to make some real progress in the search engines for searches on your major keyword... Great, you're on your way! Then, you think... "Wait a minute, what about the '.net', '.org', '.biz', '.info', etc.? Shouldn't I register these domains before someone else does? And what about the misspellings and other established keyword domains that are relevant to the subject of my website? You know what, I’m going to register those too. After all, domains are valuable, and surely all these domains MUST bring additional targeted traffic to my site!"
So you go ahead and register all versions of your domain, as well as a few other domains that include variations of your main keyword. You set them up initially and park them all on your main hosting account, with each domain serving the content of your main website. Then what happens? You sit back and wait for the increased traffic your various acquisitions have brought, right?
Wrong! In fact, panic sets in. Your rankings start to drop dramatically. You can’t find your site anywhere in ANY significant search engine! Your site has literally dropped off the map. What happened? Where did you go wrong?
Well, the answer is simple, and it involves the powerful and frequently used 301 redirect. Huh? Yep. By registering a series of domain names and parking them on your main domain, you have created a network of websites with EXACTLY the same content. This is called duplicate content, and in the eyes of all major search engines, it is simply "BAD," and your site WILL be penalized.
So does that mean you need to create separate websites for each of the domains that you purchased? Well, you could if you wanted to, but that would be a lot of extra work. The solution is a simple 301 redirect. By using a 301 redirect on each of your domain names, you can redirect the domain to your main website URL without being penalized by the search engines. In fact, they actually like the good old 301 redirect. It will actually IMPROVE your ranking.