301 redirect a old site that has been "dead" for a while?

[rayvensoft]

Hi guys,

A quick question.  I have a client who has an old business website that had some great links (Forbes.com, CocaCola.com, etc).  The problem is that he knew nothing about SEO and let the hosting expire.  He still owns the domain, but the site is no longer listed in Google.  He did no SEO, so I am not worried about being hit by any artificial anchor text penalties, since the links are as natural as it gets.

So my questions is, would there be any benefit from 301 redirecting that site to his new business?

The new business is in almost exactly the same niche as the old site.  I am thinking of 301'ing to a sub-page which will refer to his past venture with the old business, not to the homepage of the new site.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[mememax]

Hi Ray, unfortunately there's no clear science on how to avoid any possible issue on your migration however I understand your strategy.

You would like to create a landing page which reflects the old sites name so google would still match backlinks branded anchors with what it finds in your site. You may try to put a couple of mentions of the old brand so you'll achieve the same: Google will see link pointing to brand X and finds correlation with the old page and the new one since there are mentions of the brand X in the new one too.

Hope this helps, I'd like to know your achievements on this!

[rayvensoft]

Hi Mememax,

Thanks for the feedback.  The reason I am leaning towards redirecting to a sub-page is two-fold, and maybe it does not matter, but here it is.

1. The first domain was branded under a totally different brand name.  Not a EMD, simply another brand.  So, I was concerned that google may not like that most of the links coming back to the new domain homepage did not have anything to do with the old page (as far as branding is concerns).  I can however make the sub-page mention the old business and how we are related, thus making it more relevant.

2. Protection from the google algorithm.  In the off chance that google does not like the 301 and penalizes the page, it will be much easier to recover from a penalty on the subpage, instead of having to recover from a homepage penalty.

The benefits may be a bit less than a homepage link, but the risk is also much less.  Thanks.

[mememax]

Hi Ray, probably if you did that when the domain was still indexed in google you'll be achieving a better boost in rankings since the whole value would be passed from one domain to another, however if those links are still live you will still benefit from taht 301 since the value of a redirect is the same of a link.

About the landing page, your proposal seems good and completely white hat. Just wondering if you won't be achieving more just by 301 to the homepage, if those two sites are almost identical. since you want your homepage to improve its value and then pass that to the other pages not improving just a page about an old site.

Hope this helps!