Hi, I have a 2 travel websites and I want to merge then to become one large site (both of these are purely vb forums). I also have a new domain name for this website which is a lot better than the other two. However, my problem is that the new domain has no backlinks as I have just purchased it. So my question is - what is the best thing for me to do from a search engine perpective, as I don't want to loose all my traffic. If I 301 redirect both old sites to the new website, what will happen ?? ie does google then reward to backlinks of the old sites and their domain ages to the new website ?? I would be interested to know your thoughts and particularly from anyone who has done this. Thanks
You must do a 301 redirect if you want a redirect. A 301 has always been the best way to change a domain, counting Google old links to new site and maintaining your positions. Also Google recommend this way. But what I have seen is Google not relying too much about 301 redirects lately, and I alert you Google maybe will not rank you very well. This year I have made 3 important redirects and in two times I had to begin from 0.
Ummm - that is not very reassuring. What do you think the best thing is to do - keep the other sites up and running and just link to the new website from the old sites for a while and use one master database for all site forums ?? Then when the new site starts to rank do a 301 redirect ??
I am not an expert, but I have read that a new site will not get a high rank as an older site, especially with Google.