In the Photographers SEO Book I recommend photographers use keyword rich domain name URLs. Keyword use in the root domain is of high importance, and when people learn this they immediately think about buying up domains with quality keywords.
The rub is when photographers don’t want to give up their old domain because of technical hurdles, its on print materials, whatever. A light goes on to just forward the new keyword-rich domain to the existing domain.
If you read the ebook, you know that Google ranks sites primarily based on 2 factors: text on the page and links pointing to that page. Once you forward a domain, it no longer has any text underneath it. If you’re doing proper SEO, then you aren’t spending time building links that point to the new domain because it simply redirects. So a brand new forwarded domain will not aid in ranking because nothing is behind that URL where Google can assign value.
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I completely understand what you have stated above, though I have to admit I am one of those photographers who purchased several generic URLs to forward to my website. Since they are already purchased for the year, I would just love to know if it hurts me in anyway to have them forwarding to my website while I still maintain ownership of these URLs.
I also just purchased http://www.leahvalentinephotography.com, which sounds like I should have set my website up under in the beginning (at the time I feared it was too long). Is it much more advantageous to start over with printed materials under the new URL, can simple changes from http://www.leahvalentine.com/engagement-portfolio to /engagement-portraits-portfolio etc. be almost as helpful in increasing rankings?
I apologize for the long questions in a comment! Thank you so much for all of the information, I am learning a lot from the ebook I just purchased!
Hi Leah, to answer your first question, no the forwarding domains won’t hurt your site.
To answer your other question I would need more details on how the forwards are setup. If you joined the community feel free to start a thread in the member forum.