301 or 302 Redirect?

[mymissearch]

My company is looking into doing a complete site redesign, compiling our brands (which currently have their own sites) into one supersite and and then changing the domain to our parent company name. Since we have good rank in search currently, online partnerships, affiliates, ppc campaigns, etc. we're looking into using a redirect to salvage our links and our rank. It would be a permanent change, so naturally, I would think a 301 redirect would be the best choice, but I've heard in order to better retain rank, we could use a 302 temporary redirect and change to the 301 later on once our new links catch up in rank. I've heard pros and cons for 301 and 302, so now I'm just throwing it out there. I don't want to do anything that gets us booted off of Google and I don't want to lose rank, if at all possible. Is there anyone who has gone through this transition before that can help out? I'm curious not only about the domain redirect but how the site redesign affects the situation.
Thanks!

[mcanerin]

The only time you would ever want to use a 302 in this case was if the new domain was a brand new domain and you were worried about being sandboxed.

Even then, you could mess things up if you did it wrong, so be double sure that you are very careful how you set it up.

So I guess the first question is: is the domain for the new super site new, or are you consolidating the sites into an existing, ranking site?

Ian

[mymissearch]

Ian,

The domain for the super site is new. Does "sandboxed" mean totally dumped by the SE's? I guess we were hoping a redirect from the domains with rank would be our solution to keep or gain rank quickly again, but I'm not SEO savvy enough to know what's best and what is frowned upon. Any ideas?

[clickagent75]

I've read that if you currently have a page or domain that will be changing to a new domain and want to permanently preserve and transfer the page's rankings your best choice would be to do a 301 redirect.

302 redirects could be construed as an attempt to hijack a URL. Which could end up getting your site penalized.

[mymissearch]

I guess my biggest concern is losing page rank. We'd move from a site with good rank to 0. I expect to update all inbound links to the new URL asap and the redirect would only buy me time to do that without shutting down online biz for a day or longer. Other than that, a 301 doesn't really "roll-over" rank from one domain to a new domain, does it? Or, in my situation, should I just expect to start off the new domain with no rank, whatsoever and have to build back up to what we had before using link strategies? :confused:

Side note - just found out a little bit about cname redirects (duplicate conent sites?) and it sounds like very bad news. Why would people use it at all? Just curious.

[robertger]

Hi,

My company is currently in the middle of a Re-brand from www.exampleA.com to www.exampleB.com.

We have very good rankings for exampleA but now the re-brand has been accelerated ahead of schedule and exampleB website is not ready for release.

Our Marketing Team have circulated www.exampleB.com in many publications but we do not want users to go to this site as it not ready.

What impact would putting a 302 redirect from www.exampleB to www.exampleA.com have if any?

Rob

[telNform]

I would not recommend using a 302 redirect for anything. If you are trying to game the system .. then - good luck

[evilgreenmonkey]

I would not recommend using a 302 redirect for anything. If you are trying to game the system .. then - good luckI wouldn't agree with that comment personally. A 302 tells the search engine and browsers that the redirect is temporary. If for whatever reason you need to move a page temporarily (such as when moving servers or a page being down), you should implement a 302. If you implemented a 301 in this instance, the search engine is unlikely to visit the redirected URL again (as you've told them that the content will never exist there again). There are very few circumstances where a 302 is most appropriate, although these situations do still exist.

:)

Rob