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.
