Google rankings and 301 redirect

[LarryChrzan]

This is somewhat complicated but I think it is worth a discussion.
I have a client that has 2 domain names.
Let's call them www.companyname.com and www.oldcompname.com.
Neither is 301 redirected to the other, and I want to do that.
Obviously I'm worried about duplicate content.

The preferred name is www.companyname.com, as this is...surprisingly enough, the company name. :rolleyes:
The www.oldcompname.com is an old name of the company. :eek:

Here is the pertinent information:

SERPs
www.oldcompname.com has a lot of top 10 rankings on Google for many good keywords that are driving traffic to the site now.
www.companyname.com has only one keyword that is ranked on Google.
On Yahoo, it's a mix - www.oldcompname.com and www.companyname.com are both ranked for some words and each is ranked sometimes without the other.

Inbound links according to Yahoo
www.oldcompname.com has 26
www.companyname.com has 50

Indexing
Running the search site:www.oldcompname.com on Google shows 43 pages indexed.
Running the search site:www.companyname.com on Google shows 197 pages indexed.
Running the search site:www.oldcompname.com on Yahoo shows 58 pages indexed.
Running the search site:www.companyname.com on Yahoo shows 118 pages indexed.
The SEs find the catalog pages for www.companyname.com, not for www.oldcompname.com.

So what I would like to do is do the 301 redirect from www.oldcompname.com to www.companyname.com.
www.companyname.com has more inbound links and is better indexed.
But I am worried about losing all those rankings on www.oldcompname.com, especially on Google.
This could have a big impact on business.

What would you do? :confused:

[trichnosis]

301 redirect will not effect any ranking loose . 301 means permant redirect :)

[david boon]

301 redirect will nt affect your ranking either ways .....so you can just go ahead with out any doubts in m,ind

[daykevi]

I think 301 redirect help you to retain ur traffice & position of keywords in SERP.

best of luck
Day Kevi

[Mr Skyline]

301 redirects re assign all link reputation and pagerank to the new url permanently ... you should be fine :)

[megri]

We have used for three site and have not lost any ranking so far

[continuum]

will a 301 also re-assign PR to the inner pages if we use

redirect 301 / http://www.newsite.com.au/

or do we have to do a separate 301 for each page?

[rayner-x]

yeah right, 301 redirect have nothing to do with your rankings

[SUBMITTER 800]

301 redirect i guess generally helps you get the traffic that youhave from your other sites and gain them as you have developed them yourself.

so it would most likely help you with rankings instead of loosing them.

[drionix]

This is somewhat complicated but I think it is worth a discussion.
I have a client that has 2 domain names.
Let's call them www.companyname.com and www.oldcompname.com.
Neither is 301 redirected to the other, and I want to do that.
Obviously I'm worried about duplicate content.

The preferred name is www.companyname.com, as this is...surprisingly enough, the company name. :rolleyes:
The www.oldcompname.com is an old name of the company. :eek:

Here is the pertinent information:

SERPs
www.oldcompname.com has a lot of top 10 rankings on Google for many good keywords that are driving traffic to the site now.
www.companyname.com has only one keyword that is ranked on Google.
On Yahoo, it's a mix - www.oldcompname.com and www.companyname.com are both ranked for some words and each is ranked sometimes without the other.

Inbound links according to Yahoo
www.oldcompname.com has 26
www.companyname.com has 50

Indexing
Running the search site:www.oldcompname.com on Google shows 43 pages indexed.
Running the search site:www.companyname.com on Google shows 197 pages indexed.
Running the search site:www.oldcompname.com on Yahoo shows 58 pages indexed.
Running the search site:www.companyname.com on Yahoo shows 118 pages indexed.
The SEs find the catalog pages for www.companyname.com, not for www.oldcompname.com.

So what I would like to do is do the 301 redirect from www.oldcompname.com to www.companyname.com.
www.companyname.com has more inbound links and is better indexed.
But I am worried about losing all those rankings on www.oldcompname.com, especially on Google.
This could have a big impact on business.

What would you do? :confused:

Well, it's pretty unanimous that everyone is saying 301 redirect will not make you loose your rankings. Matt Cutts of Google has an article about moving Domains, please take a look at it at: Matt Cutts' moving-to-a-new-web-host article (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/moving-to-a-new-web-host/)

Cheers! :D