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What you don't get in the 301 is the anchor text passing to the primary domain. Therefore, it might not be ideal.
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That's not entirely true regarding a 301 not passing anchor text. There is no consensus on the matter within the SEO community. There is evidence pointing both directions as far as whether a 301 still passes anchor text. It seems mostly related to how the 301 is being implemented, and to what purpose.
- For Example:
When it seems like a bait and switch.
- If you redirect an old page url to a new page and the new page has no related content to the old page and none of the targeted keywords in the content anchor text won't continue to pass.
- If your new page url has the same page, very similar page, or related page with the same keywords then it seems that the anchor text does get passed.
When it seems like a link acquisition strategy.
- If you do 301 redirect from 10 different domains all to the same domain it seems that the anchor text is not passed, or it is minimized to some extent.
- If you do a redirect from a single domain there is much more chance that the anchor text will pass. (as long as it doesn't seem like bait and switch)
Google has a mind-boggling amount of data to sift through, and they have an amazing amount of talent available to make the algorithms capable of multiple decisions regarding redirects. There are many absolutely legitimate uses for a 301 and it would be unlikely for google to make a blanket rule such as
never passing anchor text with a 301 redirect. Especially when they themselves recommend its usage for legitimate purposes.
Having said all that, the following is still the best advice on the matter the OP is asking about.
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Besides all this, registering another domain just to hit the keyword is 2009. Create a category within your primary site and content and optimize it then build themed links to that section, you will rank better than you ever will with a gimp second domain.
I think that if you register a second domain, immediately redirect it to the primary domain and then start a backlinking campaign for the second domain in order to get keyword advantage because of the keyword in second domain name won't have the effect you're looking for. I doubt that having a keyword domain name will have the same benefit in this case as it would had your primary domain had the keyword in it. In the situation your describing the main value in a keyword domain name is mostly in the fact that whenever you use the actual domain name as your anchor it still carries some keyword weight, you can accomplish the same thing by just using the keyword in the anchor and point straight to your primary domain. As MisterGemini has suggested you will probably get more "bang for your buck" by doing it that way.
The only reason I would suggest getting additional domains to redirect to your primary domain is for actual site promotion rather than seo. It might be beneficial in some situations to use a memorable domain name in an advertising campaign. For instance if you have a website such as reallyfamousfitnessguru .com it might be worthwhile to also have a 301 from getreallyrippedfast .com and advertise that url on social networking sites. All the links you build would be done for actual site promotion, not seo. Although the links could possibly help index the primary site anyway, this would simply be because of the links passing through the 301 and not because of the actual second domain name.
It can also be helpful if you want to secure similar domain names to keep competitors from getting them, but in that case you'll either do a 301 and forget or else put content on both domains and interlink them as if a single domain. For most people it's not worth bothering with, but in some circumstances it can be worthwhile.
edit - I thought of another reason you might want to get the additional domain if it's a good enough name.
Rather than just setting it up as a redirected domain, you could use it as a link silo for your primary domain. Get the second domain, get it hosted, build a content rich site related to your primary domain, build standard backlinks and some type of linkwheel type structured backlinking to the new domain to get it ranked and indexed well, backlink from the new site to the primary site. That should give you much more benefit than just using it to do a 301 redirect.
