Q:  "I was wondering about the most search engine friendly way to manage setting up a generic domain name to point to my main business website, and how to take advantage of it in organic searches?"
Darryl West

A: Thanks for your question Darryl. The thing to remember is that there's two types of re-directs that most domain hosts provide. A simple 301 redirect and a framed re-direct.
Here's a break down of how both of these work.

301 re-direct
Lets say I had the domain name www.lawnmowing.com.au. I have a website on this and am quite happy with it. I've also gone out and registered www.lawnmaintenance.com.au and want this domain re-directed to my website.

A 301 redirect works in that when someone types in www.lawnmaintenance.com.au or clicks on a link with this domain name in it, they will be sent to the original website and the domain will change back to the original domain name of www.lawnmowing.com.au.

Here's what Google has to say about 301 re-directs:-

"If you need to change the URL of a page as it is shown in search engine results, we recommended that you use a server-side 301 redirect. This is the best way to ensure that users and search engines are directed to the correct page. The 301 status code means that a page has permanently moved to a new location.

301 redirects are particularly useful in the following circumstances:

• You've moved your site to a new domain, and you want to make the transition as seamless as possible.
• People access your site through several different URLs. If, for example, your home page can be reached in multiple ways - for instance, http://example.com/home, http://home.example.com, or http://www.example.com - it's a good idea to pick one of those URLs as your preferred (canonical) destination, and use 301 redirects to send traffic from the other URLs to your preferred URL. You can also use Webmaster Tools to set your preferred domain.
• You're merging two websites and want to make sure that links to outdated URLs are redirected to the correct pages.

To implement a 301 redirect for websites that are hosted on servers running Apache, you'll need access to your server's .htaccess file. (If you're not sure about your access or your server software, check with your webhoster.) For more information, consult the Apache .htaccess Tutorial and the Apache URL Rewriting Guide. If your site is hosted on a server running other software, check with your hoster for more details."

A framed re-direct
A framed re-direct is when your website is essentially put within a frame and the additional url is used. So using the example above if I was to type in www.lawnmaintenance.com.au the website would be served up using this domain. The downside to this type of re-direct is that the website will also be available using the original domain. So put simply, there will be two copies of the website which is bad news for duplicate content penalties.

Looking at Google's view on re-directing I would suggest following their advice and staying with a 301 re-direct as this is by far the cleanest method at the moment.

Now Darryl can move on his SEO strategy with the knowledge that he's getting the right advice. This is one of the benefits of being an SEOhub member, so if you know someone that you think might benefit from our website please feel free to send on our details.