Can You "Prep" a page for future 301 Redirects?

[Planet13]

Hi there, Everyone:

I plan on redirecting about 200 out of 300 pages from site A to existing, very similar pages on Site B.

I plan on doing the redirect in about 6 weeks time.

In the meantime, is there anything one should do to prep the pages on Site B? In other words, what can / should one do to let visitors / search engines know that the page on Site A will soon be moving to a new site?

I was thinking of putting a nofollow link from the pages on Site A to the corresponding pages on Site B.

However, the content is quite similar between the pages on site A and their corresponding pages on Site B. So maybe having even a nofollow link might make google recognize it as duplicate content?

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

[tedster]

I never gave it much thought before - but my first impression is not to try anything - just redirect when you're ready. In general, the more tweaking you do for SEO purposes, the more you risk getting a smackdown. That experience is what makes me say just make one change, not several.

[enigma1]

Are you moving pages because you're expanding the site? For example if you have an eshop and you want to add a blog moving pages to be handled with another application. If the site has good traffic for these pages in question, I wouldn't do that. Instead I would change the framework to handle the extra requirement and keep the same links.

[Planet13]

Thank you tedster and enigma1:

Are you moving pages because you're expanding the site?

Actually, no. I am moving pages because I am CONTRACTING the site. It covers too many subjects, and I want to narrow the focus.

Site B is more focused and contains a subset of the products already found on site A (same products, re-worded descriptions and titles).

I think that tedster is probably right: just wait till I am ready and just redirect the products then.

I will probably just make ONE link from the home page of site A saying that many of the products will be moving to site B after the New year. Wonder if I should nofollow that link or not...