Phasing out poorly done subdomains

Need an advice on redirecting existing traffic

[Eugenios]

I have a couple of sites that use subdomains (cannoicals, vanity, whatever they are called) in the form of blue.widgets.com or cool.widgets.com.

All of them point to different sections of www.widgets.com

These domains where improperly handled and they show duplicate pages. I could delete them, but don't want to lose the traffic they have (not much, but it helps).

Is there any way to redirect the traffic they bring to the main domain and then kill these sub domains?

Any help or advice will be great

Enrique

[mcavic]

Yes. You need to use 301 redirects to redirect the subdomains to the real site. This can be accomplished using Name Virtual Hosting settings on your Web server, or possibly using .htaccess. It depends on how your server is set up, and how much control you have over it.

But then you'll want to leave the subdomains in place for a very long time, so that traffic keeps getting redirected. But with the 301 redirects, there won't be any penalty.

[Eugenios]

Thanks for your quick reply. Much appreciated