Links or Redirect?

[mikecartmel]

My client's company has just acquired another company in the same industry and with that acquisition came two websites; companyname.com and companyname.co.uk.

companyname.com has PA13 and DA10, companyname.co.uk has PA15 and DA10.

At the moment, the two companies are to be run as separate companies but will become fully merged in time.

My client's own website is brand new  (PA1  and DA) and I'm wondering what is the best way to use these other two sites to improve my client's search ranking.

Should I use the two sites to link to my client (these would be logical and natural links e.g. explaining the acquisition, under new management) or would it simply be better to redirect the domains to the new site?

Many thanks

[mikecartmel]

Thanks for the advice. Fortunately reciprocal links aren't an issue as the two companies were competitors of sorts but I've checked just in case.

[mikecartmel]

Thanks Russ

[SEOTGT]

Yeah, do the redirect and if possible keep hosting the sites on different servers--then it doesn't look like you are building your own link network. Try to avoid reciprocal links too (not always possible with mergers like this).

[HiveDigitalInc]

I would go ahead and redirect it. The redirect will pass nearly all of the authority on to the new site, while the link will only pass a fraction based on the PageRank patent.