301 redirect or not?

[nickreynolds]

Site A is fairly succesful. Gets natural traffic. Has some nice links. Has PR3. Domain name is relevant to the brand.

Owner of Site A has expanded their business and so Site A, although still relevant to the older part of the business, is not so good for the expanded business as the domain name only relects the old business. So a new site (Site B) has been developed and is now a few months old.

Site B includes the information from Site A on several pages within the site but in different format so no duplicate content.

It has been suggested to setup a 301 redirect from the old (more established/higher traffic) site, so all traffic goes to the new site. I can't help feeling there is a potential loss in doing this.

The alternative is to leave Site A intact and place a simple link so people can click through. This is the present arrangement. At present there is traffic to both sites, they rankly separately in SERPS, there is no duplicate content.

Can I have people's views on this (the issue is not just a simple domain name change).

[tedster]

Site B includes the information from Site A on several pages within the site but in different format so no duplicate content.

How significant is the difference? In other words, are we talking about text content versus flash, or just a slightly rephrased version?

[nickreynolds]

Basically it's completely rewritten.
Site A is 10 pages.
The essential information about that part of the business is effectively condensed into one page on Site B.

My concern is about loss in terms of search rankings. The site owner has been advised that effectively Site B will get the benefit of Site A's good rankings. I'm not convinced that it's a risk free startegy in terms of ranking, but want to hear from those with more expertise than me.

[trakkerguy]

I've done this several times. The rankings USUALLY transfer to new domain, IF the rankings are mostly a result of solid backlinks.

2 things you do lose, in terms of ranking power are:

Domain age - Site B is new, so it has less trust.

Keyword in domain name - You don't say if site A uses the keywords in the domain. Site B won't rank as well if it loses keywords in domain.

[Planet13]

I agree with takkerguy. I did this (more or less) and that is what I experienced.

[nickreynolds]

Ok thanks for that guys. I think I'll suggest we go ahead with that then.
Yes I think the backlinks are a big factor in current success and no, keywords are not in the domain name.