301 Redirecting an Old Domain --> Another Old Domain Query

[LX911]

Hello Buddies & Experts, so here is something that's going on in my mind and need validation from your experience..
I want to redirect from .htaccess level of Domain A to Domain B for an entire year so that all the link juice can be extracted

What can be the consequences?

Domain A = is NOT INDEXED by Google
Domain B = is INDEXED by Google but ranks poorly

What I can also do is.. setup a basic blog type original content based website for Domain A.. see if it ranks and when it does maybe then throw a link to Domain B.. ??

Stats of both the domains are as follows:

Domain A​	Domain B​
Authority Score (Semrush) = 35	35
Backlinks (Semrush) = 400K	100K
Domain Age = 1 year	10 years
Spam Score (Moz) = 33%	1%
Domain Authority (Moz) = 11	8
Page Authority (Moz) = 40	40
Trust Flow (Majestic) = 4	2
Citation Flow (Majestic) = 21	22
.EDU Domains Backlink = 12	1
.GOV Domains = 2	0

 

[DeadJoe]

How closely are Domain A and Domain B related?

 

[Castamir]

How closely are Domain A and Domain B related?

This is the most important question. And they have to be more than closely related. Page to page redirects are best if their titles are similar.

 

[LX911]

How closely are Domain A and Domain B related?

This is the most important question. And they have to be more than closely related. Page to page redirects are best if their titles are similar.

So both are not exact matches.. but in the same industry/segment.
Example: Domain A is about Gardening Tools, while,
Domain B is about Terrace Gardening generic blog.. broad topic-based basically.

 

[Castamir]

So both are not exact matches.. but in the same industry/segment.
Example: Domain A is about Gardening Tools, while,
Domain B is about Terrace Gardening generic blog.. broad topic-based basically.

You are most likely to get a negative ranking score from that, many case studies have been done on this. Some people when they do this kind of thing conclude that 301 redirect doesn't work. But it's wrong. The page titles must be similar for the juice to fully transfer or in some cases, avoid negative rank score.

 

[DeadJoe]

The purpose of a 301 redirect is to move from Domain A to Domain B, how are you going to justify this? so many niche sites have tanked when owners got greedy and did a 301.

If you absolutely need to do this, then restore the domain you want to 301. Let it sit for 4 - 6 months. Then take all of the content and copy paste it to your existing site. Once that is done, redirect like this:

domainA.com/post1 > domainB.com/post1
domainA.com/post2 > domainB.com/post2

You want to make it look like the site is moving. Remember this is why people do 301s. After you've done the page level redirects, wait for another 4 - 6 months and see how it's panning out, then go ahead and redirect the root domain (if you want to be super cautious, see how NYTimes did it with WireCutter)

Good luck

 

[LX911]

You are most likely to get a negative ranking score from that, many case studies have been done on this. Some people when they do this kind of thing conclude that 301 redirect doesn't work. But it's wrong. The page titles must be similar for the juice to fully transfer or in some cases, avoid negative rank score.

The purpose of a 301 redirect is to move from Domain A to Domain B, how are you going to justify this? so many niche sites have tanked when owners got greedy and did a 301.

If you absolutely need to do this, then restore the domain you want to 301. Let it sit for 4 - 6 months. Then take all of the content and copy paste it to your existing site. Once that is done, redirect like this:

domainA.com/post1 > domainB.com/post1
domainA.com/post2 > domainB.com/post2

You want to make it look like the site is moving. Remember this is why people do 301s. After you've done the page level redirects, wait for another 4 - 6 months and see how it's panning out, then go ahead and redirect the root domain (if you want to be super cautious, see how NYTimes did it with WireCutter)

Good luck

I would like to Thank both of you for guiding on this matter.

If Domain A is resurrected in a form of a simple blog and once the indexing starts maybe try to sell off only the domain.. how much can it fetch?

 

[DeadJoe]

I would like to Thank both of you for guiding on this matter.

If Domain A is resurrected in a form of a simple blog and once the indexing starts maybe try to sell off only the domain.. how much can it fetch?

That's impossible to say. A domain in one niche can be a lot more expensive than the other. It also depends on the link profile, referring domains, where the links are coming from, how links are distributed, if the domain has dropped before etc. There are too many variables.