301 many smaller domains to a new, large domain

[tfbpa]

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.

[EGOL]

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.

[tfbpa]

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.

[EGOL]

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.

[Doc_Sheldon]

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.