Best way to retain banklink values when moving site?

[RuchirP]

Hi all,

I want to get some opinions on what the best practice is when transferring backlink values from an old site to a new one.

On the old site, I currently have a product page and this particular product has multiple models all listed on the one singe page. However on the new site, every model of this particular product has its own page. These product model pages would have relatively similar content apart from several key details which differentiates the models.

Firstly would you guys recommend this splitting of models of the same product to different pages?

If so, my initial thought process is to 301 redirect the old product page to the new model page that is most popular, and adding  rel canonical tags to the other model pages.

Would you consider this best practice? Or are there better ways I can be doing this to retain backlink values without also getting penalised due to possible content duplication?

Thanks!

Jac - sent from my manager's account.

[SoftzSolutions]

Cross domain canonical is an excellent idea given the fact that you are going to retain the old website. Just go for it.

[RuchirP]

Thanks Sandip, so do you think this is more of a branding issue?

The domain will remain the same.

For example :

The url for a product on the old site is :
example.com/product1

and

the urls for the same product on the new is are : 
example.com/product1-model1
example.com/product1-model2
example.com/product1-model3
etc...

Say I 301 redirect example.com/product1 to example.com/product1-model1

and add rel canonicals to example.com/product1-model2 & example.com/product1-model3

Can you see any drawbacks to this method?

[SoftzSolutions]

From SEO point of view, you can do this -

I hope that you have Google Webmaster Tools access of both the websites – in that case you need to login to GWT and then go to “Configuration” > “Change of URL” . Select the website where you want Google pass all the link juice.

However, you need to make a 301 from old domain to new domain.

Now, if we take it from the branding perspective, it will be really nice to get people land on the old domain and then using meta refresh tag to get them landed on the preferred domain. But somehow search engines do not like meta refresh thing and of course, SEOwise it will not be adding any value.

Really a tough call I agree.