Hello, we had a website live for a product , the site was well indexed and climbing, we decided to brand a seperate domain and transfered content to the second domain (an older domain) , I am pointing the 1st domain to the second to capture leads from previous work but the old site is down ,the question should I pull the first domain off now , there are still some rankings left from original work but I do not want to damage the 2nd domain or new work , is it ok to leave both domains pointing to same content? or should I remove the forward from 1st domain?? asap or does it matter the 2nd domain is already indexed
You must make permanent redirects (301) from your original domain to the old one, so you would transfer all the backlink value from your previous domain to the new one. And you should keep the ownership of the old domain. Pretty much thats it.
Also, keep in mind that even with a 301 redirect, not all of the backlink value is transferred (most of it is, but not all)