Purchasing an existing domain + redirecting to company's domain

[Raleigh]

Let's pretend that competitor.com ranks well for certain search terms and generates some traffic from organic search.

If a company were to acquire the competitor (or their domain), what's the smartest way to redirect that SEO value to the acquiring company's website? Does a 301 redirect work between different root domains? Even if it does work, is that the smartest approach?

Thanks for your help!

[max.favilli]

A 301 is counted by google as a link, both John Muller and Matt Cutts said that few times.

So it's just a link.

But since it's from a competitor domain, it is potentially a very powerful link, because google algo is believed to value links from websites within your topic/business/field much more than just any link. And I have seen that work that way with my eyes a couple of times. "Potentially", because of course it does depends on many factors, like that competitor metrics, such as DA/MT/TF/etc...

If the competitor domain is well established, I wouldn't worry too much about the redirect being flag as manipulative by search engines.

Of course if it's the best choice to 301 the root, 301 with some logic, or keep the website online as it is... Depends on many other factors, not all SEO related.

[JordanLowry]

Purchasing your competitors domain and redirecting it back to your website will tell Google that URL no longer exist anymore. It could be seen as manipulative of the search results since it would not provide any direct value to the searcher. It could be better to build up the competitors domain if you decide to purchase it rather than redirecting it back to your site.

But if you were to purchase the competitors domain you could do a one to one 301 redirect. You could redirect the competitors pages to your equivalent rather than a blanket 301 redirect.

Hope that helps some.