Using Keyword Rich Domains as Links

I've seen a lot of posts and information about whether it's wise to have multiple domains pointing back to the same site using 301 redirects, and I understand that the actual words in the domain takes second place to other factors.

I was wondering, though, if it would make a difference if those keyword rich domains were the domains other people used when linking to your site. Then each link would contain the site keywords...

So would it be a good idea to purchase one or two domains that contain the site's keywords and ask other people to use them when linking to you? Or would search engines penalize the site for constantly being redirected? And would the links using the keyword rich domains help boost the inbound link count of the main website (would the search engines attribute that link as a link to the main website it was redirected to or as a link to the keyword rich domain)?

Thank you for any light you can shed. I've been looking all over the Internet and can't seem to figure out whether purchasing keyword rich domains for the express purpose of having people use them as links would be wise or not.

Have you considered building effective related material for the other domains you have/are purchasing, then point them back to the url with the keywords you are targeting?

Yes, that's one of the things we were considering, but I was concerned because 1) I heard search engines penalize duplicate content, and, due to the focus of the organization, the content would have to be closely related, though could be worded differently, and 2) all the links to the other domains then wouldn't be counting toward the number of links of the main site, thereby boosting its ranking. Are those not things I should worry about?

My thought was not around duplicate content, it was more around unique content. If that is not an option, then imo you should just focus on optimising the content you have within the website.

Theres nothing wrong with a network of websites, but my understanding of 301 redirects is to guide the bots if you have moved content or even domains, never thought of it as a measurable way to point relevancy to a main url, if it is even measured at all.

Purchasing the domains is not a bad thing, future development of those domain names may become an option further down the road. personally i would concentrate on developing what i have already.

Thank you for helping me understand this--I think we will work on content development then and maybe developing some other domains as we're able.

This idea is a waste of time.

If those KW-rich domains have no links of their own then the redirect that they provide to the master site has zero value.

Second, if those KW-rich domains do have links the redirect will blunt the value of those links.

The only exception to this is any type-in traffic received by the KW-rich domains.

It is a mistake to assume that you can manufacture links that will fool Google.

That's what I wasn't sure of and couldn't seem to figure out anywhere--thank you. We'll just work on trying to develop our content better then.

A domain not indexed [thus no links] won't do a thing BUT with a little creativity and some niche circumstances this can work extremely well.

the domains without incoming links will value 0. So if you buy some domains in order to build them some value requires time. Why not use that time to promote your primary domain?

I think there is only exception. If you have one domain targeted on some really valuable keywords. For example if you have something like iphone-applications and there are 10 millions searchs daily for that term it worth to build there a website to point to your domain. But not to redirect it.