Point to Other domain

[JointTech]

I have a site thats been up for about 4 years. It has good ranking in the SERPs for my keywords.

I took over a company that has been around for much longer and they have had the website for 10+ years. granted it was terrible and didnt rank.

I put up new content on the site. Its in the same topic area as my original site.

Am I still going to face the sandbox issue? What are your thoughts on pointing traffic, but more importantly rankings to the "new" site.

[tedster]

Welcome to the forums, JointTech.

Did your takeover include a change in the domain registration - so that Whois is now different? Did you remove all the old content? In either of these situations, Google may well go through a period of recalculating trust for your newly acquired domain - and that's really what the so-called sandbox is all about.

What are your thoughts on pointing traffic, but more importantly rankings to the "new" site.

What do you mean, technically, by "pointing traffic"?

[JointTech]

thanks for the reply.
The old domain with good rankings and the new companys domain are both with the same registrar and I havent changed any contact details etc. It has been registered since 1997. Its been with opensrs for about 7 years.

The old content is on the good ranking site. New content has been put on the new companys site.

By pointing traffic. I mean; I want the human visitors from my old site to See my new one. But more importantly I want the rankings. A 302/301 would both get the people to my site but which is better for rank?

[JointTech]

And yes I removed the Old content from the new companys site.

[Gshaughn]

Generally speaking I have found older domains to have an opportunity to rank better than newer domains. Do either contain the keyword in the domain name? Is the older domain (now with new content) the one you want all traffic going to? If so, I would suggest setting up individual 301 redirects in your .htaccess pointing your other site's ranking pages to the corresponding page on the new site. Keep in mind that the old site probably wasn't ranking well for other reasons which will definitely need to be addressed.

In a lot of circumstances older sites that make not rank well are redirected to younger, ranking sites to pass 'juice'. In my experience, older domains are a lot easier to pop and get rankings. Using 301 should enable the older site to get indexed. Did you move the content from one to the other or does it differ?

[JointTech]

Do either contain the keyword in the domain name?
-no
Is the older domain (now with new content) the one you want all traffic going to?
-yes

Keep in mind that the old site probably wasn't ranking well for other reasons which will definitely need to be addressed.
-yea, the site was a POS and ZERO SEO had been done. No link building etc. Just kind of sat there.

Did you move the content from one to the other or does it differ?
-Different content. Same topic area. I've been trying not to cut and paste content ;) from the site I worked so hard to get to #1.

[Gshaughn]

You are basically going to risk throwing out your high ranking site to move over to the new site, hoping to retain high rankings soon by passing link/pr juice via 301 redirect. I would start out by using a 301 redirect in .htaccess from one page to the corresponding page on the other site. I would recommend doing this over redirecting one domain to the other.

Does anyone else see an advantage to redirecting the entire old domain to the new one, instead of page by page?

It may be advantageous to ask those linking to the old site to change their links to the new site, I would imagine even though that would count as a new link, in the long run it may be more powerful than passing links to the old domain through the 301.

Does the new site have pages indexed in the major engines currently?

[JointTech]

I have already started people moveing links to the new site. I designed a lot of the sites that point to me and I still have access to change the link.

Does the new site have pages indexed in the major engines currently?
-Yes but nothing ranked. Well if you search by company name its ranked..

I am contemplateing the 301 page by page but man thats a lot of pages ;)

thanks for the tips!