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do I?
1. 301 those pages to the new domain (probably won't lose the SERP rankings)
2. delete the pages and re-create them a-new (lose and regain the SERP rankings)
plus, would you recommend giving a one-way link to the new site from the established site or not?
current site has AdSense on it, new site will also have AdSense.
This is brand new to me. All my previous expansions were within the current old domain, just new sub-directories. This new domain and service I feel will better be served with it's own domain.
So in that case I tend to follow convention and assume that the SE's are doing their jobs correctly (even knowing that all too often, unfortunatley, that has often not been the case with redirects). Still, like I said, I'd 301 the pages, thus letting the SE's know that they've move to a new home.
It will be only about 10 pages, but they now rank extremely well on the current domain.
FrostyMug - A bunch of things going on here.
First, if you're in it for the long haul, and those pages absolutely belong on a new domain, and your long term plans are to develop that domain as an independent entity that has its own reason for being... and is not there just to grab some extra top spots for searches that overlap the first site... then doing a 301 is the "right" way to do it, or it was once upon a time. It's still the only way to do it, short of building an entirely new and unconnected site.
But, if you redirect, I think you should be prepared to lose these rankings in Google for at least six months to a year, maybe longer, depending on why these pages were ranking in the first place.
My experience in redirecting a client site from an old domain to a new domain, purely for branding purposes, was that the site virtually disappeared from Google for eight months. I won't go there again until I get the all clear sign from every hilltop (so to speak).
I tend to follow convention and assume that the SE's are doing their jobs correctly (even knowing that all too often, unfortunatley, that has often not been the case with redirects)...
caveman's braver than I am in making this assumption. I think that Google is preferring to keep link spam and domain spam out of its index and to maintain some quality controls at the expense of new domains, and also at the expense of legitimately related sites....
As to whether to connect the sites in any way, that depends, in my opinion, on how closely related in subject matter, hosting, linking, etc, the sites are... and how much you'll be able to differentiate their inbound linking patterns in the future.
If they are closely related in subject matter, and it sounds like they are, I personally would keep the sites separate. I wouldn't link them. I wouldn't 301 old pages to the new domain. I'd keep everything about them separate, and I'd get my links from different sources.
Sounds like this is a good time to reopen an old (and ongoing) discussion that caveman and I had about a year ago in a thread regarding the safe linking of related sites....
Safely Crosslinking Sites for Users
[webmasterworld.com...]
A comment by caveman in that thread is still the most articulate statement of the problem I've seen, and I'm surprised that he seems to have moved away from it here. I haven't seen that anything has changed....
The SE's have come to interpret cross linked networks as necessarily an indication of spam. But in fact there could be all sorts of reasons like those you mention (especially marketing reasons) why one would want different sites for different user groups and target audiences. Car companies make different cars, cereal companies make different cereals. This is a matter between the marketer and the user. But the SE's have inserted themselves to the detriment of users in at least some cases.
Losing 5% of the existing site will not hurt that site much IF we assume that none of the SE's will handle the 301's well and all of that traffic temporarily goes away. But in fact I'm guessing that two of the three SE's will handle the 301's averagely well, and that with some decent link building efforts (always assumed with a new site), the new site could start getting it's old traffic back and more in relatively short order. So worst case is a 5% loss of traffic (if those pages account for their average share of total site traffic), but best case is getting that traffic back within six months, and more.
Also, my personal opinion is that it may well work out fine with G too, inside of six months. But we all know that ANY new domain with G is something of a crap shoot for the first year.
Bottom line, if there are good reasons to move 5% of pages off to a new domain, I'd do it, and 301 is the best way. May or may not be short term concerns (though minimal in terms of over all traffic/numbers), and longer term if it was the right thing to do based on business/marketing/branding concerns, then it is, IMO, a better choice.
Very important: This is NOT the same advice I'd give if the question were moving the entire site to a new domain. That advice, in essence, would be to try and avoid it, if possible.
