301 many smaller domains to a new, large domain
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Hi all,
I have a question regarding permanently redirecting many small websites into one, large new one.
During the past 9 years I have created many small websites, all focusing on hotel reservations in one specific city. This has served me beautifully in the past, but I have come to the conclusion that it is no longer a sustainable model and therefore I am in the process of creating one large, worldwide hotel reservations website.
To not loose any benefit of my hard work the past 9 years, I want to permanently redirect the smaller websites to the correct section of my new website. I know that if it is only a few websites, that this strategy is perfectly acceptable, but since I am talking about 50 to 100 websites, I am not so sure and would like to have your input.
Here is what I would like to do: (the domain names are not mine, just an example)
Old website: londonhotels.com 301 to newdomain.com/london/
Old website: berlinhotels.com 301 to newdomain.com/berlin/
Old website: amsterdamhotels.com 301 to newdomain.com/amsterdam/
Etc., etc.
My plan is to do this for 50 to 100 websites and would like to have your thoughts on if this is an acceptable strategy or not.
Just to be clear, I am talking about redirecting only my websites that are in good standing, i.e. none of the websites I am thinking about 301'ing have been penalized.
Thanks for your thoughts on this.
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Thank you, tfpa. I really appreciate that.
lol.... lots of people don't like my advice... and I have to say that it isn't good for everybody everytime.
Instead of advice, most of the time, these days, I try to say "what I do" and people can decide if they want to do the same.
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Thanks EGOL, sound advice as always.
I don't think I have ever expressed my gratitude to you, but you are amongst a very small group of people who I think has never given bad or even wrong advice for as long as I can remember. I learned a whole lot from you the past 10 years and partly because of you I am were I am today and for that I am extremely thankful.
Sorry for going off topic, but now I finally had the opportunity to thank you, I just had to.
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This has served me beautifully in the past, but I have come to the conclusion that it is no longer a sustainable model and therefore I am in the process of creating one large, worldwide hotel reservations website.
I really agree with this concept.
I know that if it is only a few websites, that this strategy is perfectly acceptable, but since I am talking about 50 to 100 websites,
Like you, I have never seen it done on such a massive scale.
I hope someone who has done this will share their experience.
If you don't get a good response here, I would post the same question on a few other busy SEO forums.
If still no response, I might redirect a couple... see how it goes, redirect a couple more... take it gently and continue as long as desired result is obtained.
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To me, your approach seems like a sound strategy, assuming that none of your present sites are suffering any penalties which could be transmitted back to the new site.Sure, you'll lose a small amount of equity in the redirects, but compared to starting over from scratch, that's negligible.
The consideration, I think, would be in ensuring that the new folders for individual countries/cities are afforded the optimal opportunity to rank in their respective regions. Utilizing hreflang attributes is probably sufficient to accomplish that.
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