Expired Domains and 301 Redirecting

[reggy]

Hi,
I just bought a few expired domains that all have backlinks pointing to non-existent pages.

What is the best way to preserve the PR from those backlinks?

Is it possible to do a 301 for all 404pages to go to the homepage or is there a better method?

I have 30 of these domains with backlinks pointing to about 50 different pages each

Thank You!

[g1smd]

** What is the best way to preserve the PR from those backlinks? **

You likely can't because:
1. the site changed owner,
2. the site structure/URLs changed,
3. the site content changed,
4. the domain expired and changed owner.

All this should point Google towards 'starting over'.

It is also bad form to mass 301-redirect old URLs to one final new place, especially if the topic or theme is not closely related.

Mass-redirects to the root home page can be dangerous in some circumstances, and this might be one of them.

[jdMorgan]

Yeah, I'd pick maybe the top ten expired links, and redirect only those. But only if the new site is relevant to the old links. If not, you may damage any initial 'trust rank' assigned to your own domain.

This is more an SEO question, and I'd encourage you to read about these issues and post any new questions in one of our search engine-related forums.

Jim