Website 301 Redirect Question

I have developed a new website for a company. It has been up for a few months and is doing ok on the serps .... dancing around a bit but is ranking quite well for a number of keywords.

The company has another website which has been around for around 4 years. It does not have a lot of content and so does not rank very well in the serps.

They have decided to get rid of the old website and just concentrate on the new one.

I have redirected every page in the old website to the equivalent page on the new one using 301 redirects in the .htaccess file on the old site.

Although the old site was not doing well in the serps it was at #1 for the main company / product name.
This name was in the old domain name.

The new domain is currently ranking at 22 for that keyword.

My question is ..... will that keyword ranking for the old website be transferred to the new one?

I hope this question makes sense!

Hey good question! Why don't you use the search function and view 100 previous threads on this exact same topic!

It will. Just wait for few days to weeks.

Cnotey said:

Hey good question! Why don't you use the search function and view 100 previous threads on this exact same topic!

Click to expand...

Damn right it was a good question, no need to be an asshole. It's better then those posts that say "I need to make $10,000 in a day plz show meh"

@ OP The juice will flow over eventually but not right away, give it some time and you can blast the old domain with some scrapebox or xrumer links if you want.

Ranking changes from 301 redirect take about a week from the day it's been crawled. You are unlikely to see changes later. Once you see your old domain dropped in serps, that's pretty much it.

Onsite seo of your new site will be an important factor for determining where it will rank for old site's keywords. However, the links & PR of your domain will weight in as well.

Nobody can tell you what exactly will happen. Sometimes you loose some, sometimes you gain some.

lablinks said:

Ranking changes from 301 redirect take about a week from the day it's been crawled. You are unlikely to see changes later. Once you see your old domain dropped in serps, that's pretty much it.

Onsite seo of your new site will be an important factor for determining where it will rank for old site's keywords. However, the links & PR of your domain will weight in as well.

Nobody can tell you what exactly will happen. Sometimes you loose some, sometimes you gain some.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that. I am confident that the new website is setup better for SEO than the old one.

Just will wait and see I guess.

Yes, ranking should transfer to new domain. When you redirect your website to new domain, traffic and ranking may dwindle for some time.
I guess, this is why your rankings dropped.

Don't worry they will bounce back to normal soon.

Yes is the answer to your question.

Another that has been asked is if there is any type of penalty for using a 301? The answer is NO.

Companies merge all the time (not just big ones) and they need to transfer all that link juice to one site (the new company) if big G penalized anyone for this, there would be tons of big companies losing ranking.