Here's my scenerio I'm sure many people come across if they have their own website: I have my main website about tennis or whatever. I buy out another website about tennis with unique content. I want to redirect all existing traffic on the site i just bought to my main website. Question: To avoid any duplicate content penalties, is it as easy as using a meta refresh like this: <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.mainwebsite.com"> <TITLE>Page has moved</TITLE> </HEAD> Code (markup): ? So am I safe to add the new website's content onto my main website if I have that redirect system set up? What's it take to successfully and legitimately merge two website together?
I think I understand. Can you afford to keep both sites up? Why not just do a 301 on all the pages on the bought site to pages of your choice on your site? ir, pages that need the links. You can create new pages to re-direct the bought site pages if you really want the content on your established site. All should be fine.
DO NOT use refresh tag as a redirect if your old site's pages have backlinks. You'll lose all your SERPS. DO setup a 301 redirect from every page on the old site to a page with the same content (or mostly the same content) on the new site. However, if you had few visitors to your old site from search engines, then using a "this page has moved" sign is better because people will be reminded to update their bookmarks and links.