1)What can i gain by 301 redirecting 10 PR3 domains to my main site?
2)Is it worth it?
3)When would i start seeing results?

In theory the redirects would transfer all back links. That my take some time and at best is probably a temporary solution. You need to contact all websites that are linked to the domains that your are doing the 301 from to see if they will change the link. I would not rely on the 301 forever in regard to backlinks.

Didn't fully read your original post. Why are you doing the redirects? If your doing the re directs for vistors it is worth it. If your tying to fool the SEs in some way it won't be long term.

1)What can i gain by 301 redirecting 10 PR3 domains to my main site?
2)Is it worth it?
3)When would i start seeing results?
1. PR and anchor text will be converted from old domains to new domain (though if all 10 were 3PRs does mean you will get a PR of 30 - you need to look at the way the PR is counted)

2. Yes and it does last a while... though the recommendation of contacting the websites to change the link is good.

3. If the new domain in absolutely new then it may take a little while. I have yet to hear of a site that could use this to avoid the sandbox.

The site i want to redirect to is an old site. The 10 other domains only get links from my other sites so i dont need to contact any other webmasters. The fact that they come from the same IP address does it affect anything?

The site i want to redirect to is an old site. The 10 other domains only get links from my other sites so i dont need to contact any other webmasters. The fact that they come from the same IP address does it affect anything?

<rant>I'm guessing that the sites are all going after roughly the same terms, and that you've discovered already that interlinking them hasn't worked, so you're thinking maybe that redirecting the domains will hide what you're doing. I'm further guessing that you already know the answer to the same IP address question, but you're hoping some one will tell you that you can get away with it. Please forgive me in advance if I'm guessing wrong.

Chances are that redirecting the domains will only make matters worse, because it's even more obviously manipulative. Additionally, it's schemes like this that are making matters worse for the rest of us. Right now, we can't redirect to new domains or interlink legitimately related sites without feeling somewhat paranoid.</rant>

In the long run, a much better long term strategy would be to pick one site on which you're going to focus all of your efforts, add content that's actually worth linking to, and get some inbound links from sources unrelated to you, both directories and individual sites.

Good answer, Robert! I said something similar in another post here recently.

It's this kinda usage that really ruins the legitimate use of stuff. :(

The site i want to redirect to is an old site. The 10 other domains only get links from my other sites so i dont need to contact any other webmasters. The fact that they come from the same IP address does it affect anything?
It does seem a little off... but if they are all different sites with more than slight variations of the same name or information and you are consolidating to make things easier but considering the only links are from those sites themselves... you would be better leaving the old ones die away and concentrating on the new site indepedently.

But if they are all independent and you are creatingone place to cover all the topics together point the pages to where they are appropriate inside of the site not all to the main page.

But if they are all independent and you are creatingone place to cover all the topics together point the pages to where they are appropriate inside of the site not all to the main page.

AussieWebmaster - I'm not sure how independent they could be if their only backlinks come from each other and they're all on the same IP. I'd go with you first suggestion... let them die off and concentrate on the new site independently.

I'd get some new inbounds and drop links from the old sites entirely. I'd also avoid the temptation of trying to preserve the other sites by getting parallel inbounds to all of the sites from each linking source (ie, if you get a link to site 1 from site A, don't also get links to 2, 3, 4 etc from site A).

There are no new sites - all of them are old. I had be reading about 301 redirects on different boards so i was wondering if it was worth doing. None of the sites need to die off, i could just leave them as they are if anything ill move some to a different host with a different IP address

There are no new sites - all of them are old. I had be reading about 301 redirects on different boards so i was wondering if it was worth doing. None of the sites need to die off, i could just leave them as they are if anything ill move some to a different host with a different IP address
Moving them will help avoid being tagged as self-promoting to the search engines.

When you do a 301 redirect basically it means that you are closing the doors of the one site and opening up at another. So if you do the 301 you would in essence be killing off those sites.

Moving them to different C Block IP addresses and leaving them cross link will possibly improve their PR (though this has not been scientifically tested and proven) and also possibly improve each of the sites chances of getting in the SERPs for a bunch of shared terms.

If as you say these are all separate sites that happen to link - then 301 redirects is not really worth doing in your case. Build each as you go - submit them to directories etc. and build each of their inbound links and you may have 11 sites with good PR and solid traffic from the SERPs.

reggy73 - Are these in the same market area (ie, do their search terms overlap?), or are they sites in different markets that are all on the same IP? I believe that this would affect what you should do with them.

I recently did some redirecting like this, and my findings are that Google handles 301 Redirects just fine--if, for example, you buy a competitor and redirect their website to your main site all the competitor's links will be properly credited to your main site. This isn't too different than what reggy73 wants to do--redirect 10 domains to one main one.

You will run into problems, though, with Yahoo! and MSN (even the new MSN Beta has problems, too). They don't properly give backlink credit when domains are redirected.

Even if the domains formerly targeted the same keywords, the proper thing to do would be to use a 301 to redirect them all to one site. In the case of me buying a competitor, the proper thing to do would be to forward the competitor's site to my site--and both sites targeted the same keywords at one time, there's really not an issue.

In your case, reggy73, I suggest you weigh the potential ranking problems you'll run into with those other search engines that don't handle redirects properly. If you redirect using a 301 like you're supposed to, you'll only have Google traffic--you will probably lose rankings (if you have any) in the other engines. If you cannot afford to lose Yahoo! or MSN traffic, then you would probably be better off leaving it alone and not redirecting.

The sites are in the same market area but target different search terms. They used to show up a lot in Google's SERPS but ever since Florida traffic dropped. I just want to concentrate on optimizing my main site and if my other sites can bring some traffic/PR to my main site, then thats what i need. So what am probably going to do is move the main site to a different host

Much better to concentrate on one site as opposed to many, especially when they all deal with the same product or service. Having several sites which essentially offer the same product or service for the sake of trying to target different phrases with each site is nothing more than domain spam. You are much better off (and safer) marketing one site to target all your various phrases.

You can safely 301 redirect all the other domains which essentially tells the search engines that one site no longer exists and that the other site replaces it.

Much better to concentrate on one site as opposed to many

1 site: daily invested time 5 hours - great site getting better by the hour!

10 sites: daily invested time 5 hours - hmmm... that 30 minutes per site - by the time you get everything setup, find what you need time to move on to the next one.

You 'must' commit to shortcuts so you can 'optimized your time'.

The 10 other domains only get links from my other sites so i dont need to contact any other webmasters.

reggy - If you were a client of mine with a valued domain name, I'd advise you simply to forget the other sites and not redirect them. You'd be courting more trouble than you already have, and I don't see that you'd have much to gain.

The value a redirect would have would be to forward the link credits of inbounds that now go to the other sites. But, if I read you correctly, you don't have inbounds to the other sites from any site that's independent of your own network. Google probably perceives the overly cozy relationship of these sites now, and redirecting just raises another flag.

I think there are members here who have sites on shared IPs who do interlink and haven't observed problems. I think the problems come in when the sites are related not only by IP, but are also related by subject matter and lack independent links (ie, inbounds from sources unrelated to each other) to establish separation and validity.

Just as Google clusters results now, to prevent one site from dominating the serps for a given search, Google also, I believe... and this is conjecture based on observation... is essentially clustering results from networks of sites, so that sites it perceives as related in some ways don't dominate the serps for a given search.

But Google is more brutal about networks than it is for pages on the same site... and I've seen rankings for tangentially related searches disappear too, and in fact sites in a small (and sometimes inadvertent) network not even rank for their own names. In some cases, I've seen this affect different divisions of the same company.

After moving your domain to another IP, you might also consider using javascript links to point the other sites at you, so you at least get the traffic benefits, if any. But Google is trying to discourage the use of networks for ranking purposes.

As fathom and David Wallace point out, if ranking is your objective, it's also more efficient to focus on one site.

reggy73, if you do do this, let us know what happens. Are you talking about 301ing them all to the index page of the one site? My bet is that all your rank gets trashed within two spider cycles.

Also, we are talking PR3 domains here, not exactly the type of link-pop to take risks over. But, if none of these sites mean much to you, maybe you should do it and let us know exactly what happens so that we can take this out of the realm of speculation.

I 301'ed 4 domains to a new reference site in October - rather than have domains with niche topic areas, I thought I'd converge them into a single comprehensive site.

Backlinks appear to have redirected with Google, but PageRank doesn't seem to. Also, I've lost all rankings the prior domains had due to Google's Sandboxing.

Yahoo! still has a record of some of the old domain URLs, but has absolute no record of the new domain - may have choked on the redirects.

Overall - redirecting has helped send human traffic to the new site via existing backlinks, but I wouldn't use it as a SEO tactic.