Hi,
I have seen people who register a domain and then redirect to some other similar site mostly big sites in same category. Why do they do that? Is there a purpose? As far as I understand they do it with the intention of selling that domain to that other site by showing how many visitors are coming from them but I am not sure about it!?
Thanks
Its mainly depends on the intention of usage of domain redirect. As far as I know people do permanent domain redirect from cpanel for following popular reasons:
a) SEO advantage: Suppose you got a marketing tutorial site and you are trying to optimize your site for your primary keyword "Free Marketing Tutorials". One factor for good SEO is obtaining Keyword domain and redirecting to your parent site. Now if you have FreeMarketingTutorials.com and redirect the domain to your main site, you will certainly have some sort of SEO advantage.
b) Affiliate Marketing: Most of the times Affiliate links looks crappy. Suppose, you are trying to promote a marketing ebook and you have registered for some affiliate program. Your affiliate link will look like something like this:
http://whateverwhateverprogram.com/affliate?id=007. People are less likely to click on your affiliate link whereever (article directories, forum signatures, social medias etc.) you promote your links. Therefore, smart super affiliates use domain redirect method thats proven to be more effective and fruitful. Now say, if you have registered for FreeMarketingTutorials.com and forwarded it to
http://whateverwhateverprogram.com/affliate?id=007, you are likely to get far better clicks than using raw affiliate link.
c) Promoting and Branding parent site: For instance, ToysRUS.com acquired toys.com and forwarded to its parent site.
Well, I beg your pardon if my answer is not adequate.
Neaz