Purchasing Competitors - best domain management for Google

[Chrispcritters]

In my vertical there are ~100 or so domains. Maybe there are 10 that actually have significant traffic. Let's say I've got the capital to purchase all the other 90 domains and their owner's are willing to sell them to me. How should I manage the sites afterwards?

1) Do a 301 redirect from all the domains to the main one that I manage. What happens to the PR of the purchased domains? How does Google weight the links to the old domains. Do they help my existing domain after the 301? Would those be considered "doorway pages"?

2) Do some minor cleanup on the purchased domains and manage them independently. (Retain the existing content and just change the advertising stuff -- if any).

3) Do some minor cleanup on the purchased domains and add a link to my existing site in hopes of gaining links and PR to the existing site? Would this be considered "paid links"?

4) Just shut down the purchased domains and request removal from the SERPS?

My existing site ranks well (1-5) for plenty of keyword-phrases, but not #1 for the most trafficked keyword-phrases, it's ranked #2 there. Would a link from each of the purchased sites with link text being the keyword-phrase be a good thing?

I'd hate to do something that will hurt my existing site.

[tedster]

I find that the domain level 301 is the best approach. Eventually, PR and backlink influence will transfer. The other approaches you mention can work, but the cross linking can also trip you up. I think the 301 is the most direct and long-term safe approach.

In some cases I've worked with, the purchased domains/businesses were a specialized subcategory, and they also had their own brand following. So we built a dedicated page on the purchasing domain and sent the 301 there, rather than to the domain root. In fact, I'm in the middle of another project exactly like this right now. I'll report back if things don't work as we expect them to.

[Miamacs]

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2+3 ... definitely.

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Although don't feel any special, most of the competitive areas are full packed with same ownerships sites. No matter where the users click on the SERPs they end up within the realm of the same company/person/organization. Different whois, different servers, different everything, but you just know they're managed by the same entity.

Not sure how "safe" this approach is, to me it seems it's OK as long as it takes over an hour to find out about the connection. Besides none of them can be proven, and most of the time it's the little things that give them away. Google doesn't penalize for this. Not sure if they didn't end up in court if they did... given the brand names that follow this practice.

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If you're in for the love of SEO (!?!) do 301s.

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Say, could you pass on some of those funds? Buy up all your competitors, did you win the national lottery or what?

[edited by: Miamacs at 11:46 am (utc) on July 26, 2007]