What does Google do with 301 redirects?
On Monday, I soft-launched MarketResearchforStartups.com..
Because it's such a long URL, I often use MR4S.co when linking it on Twitter. Just makes things easier. But I plan to use the full domain 99% of the time. I think it's important for a brand to have one singular identity (for SEO, among other reasons).
MR4S.co redirects directly to MarketResearchforStartups.com.
That said, say someone links to my site using the shorter domain. How does Google think about that linkback? Does it count toward the longer domain?
FWIW, I'm not seeing MR4S.co show up as a referrer on my web traffic analytics, even though I'd bet (so far) a good 25% of my traffic came through there.
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301 redirects (along with any other type of redirect) reroute traffic from one URL to another. As you explained, when someone goes to the shorter domain they will be redirected to the longer domain that you intend to use.
Why 301 redirects?
Because 301 redirects are permanent redirects (rather than 302's which are usually temporary) that typically transfer the authority from the original url to the destination URL.
This matters for SEO because domains and URLs build up authority over time, and if you move your site to a new domain or change a URL you want that authority preserved. 301 redirects transfer the authority from the old URL to the new URL.
To answer your question, yes any authority the shorter domain has built should be transferred. I say 'should' because it's not an exact science, it's not always 1:1 but it's about as close as you can get.
I went through the same scenario a couple years ago at a larger scale when we changed our entire domain.
If you're just using this short domain for Twitter/social, why not use a URL shortener?
Google passes PageRank through 301 redirects. So it is treated basically like a direct link in theory.
But Twitter uses nofollow on external links which tells Google not to pass PageRank.
So you are fine doing what you're doing. The only risk with this is if you one day decide to turn off the redirect link and a load of your old links are broken, but if they're from Twitter it might not make any difference anyway.
I'm looking for SAAS SEO case studies if you're interested honestseo.co.uk