Is it worth keeping a decades-old domain that's merely 301 redirecting to the main domain?

[BartonInteractive]

Hi fellow Moz SEOs,

We have a bigger client who we just did an SEO Site Audit for, and it was discovered that they have several domain names that are simply 301 redirecting to their main domain name. One of their domains in particular is decades old, and the client is asking if there is any value in keeping it (and the others), or simply leaving them as-is. Considering the domain age, does anyone have any recommendations?

Much appreciated,

Zack Barton
Barton Interactive
(833) 442.6853 // office
(408) 910.7750 // mobile
https://bartoninteractive.com

[BartonInteractive]

Thank you everyone. Taking a look further, I found that:

- Google Analytics shows that this old domain used to get traffic, for years, but back in January of this year, the traffic more or less came to a halt. I suspect this is approximately when a former SEO put in 301 redirects for this domain, and Google recognized it.

- And in a site:{domain.com} search in Google, along the same lines, I found that only one page is currently being crawled -- the homepage.

- BUT in an advanced search in Google, there are 171 mentions of "{domain}.com" in Google still. While many of these are mentions of the owner's email address, this leads to recommending hanging onto the old domain, especially if it is inexpensive.

- AND in Moz Pro, I can see that while there is certainly not much happening with the old domain, it does have some link equity, which is being passed to the main new domain name.

Conclusion

With all this said, I told the client that the bottom line is that I've looked into the potential value of this domain, and do feel it's worth hanging onto -- especially if it is relatively inexpensive.

Thanks again, so much, for chiming in on this one. Should anyone else have any vastly different suggestions, I'm all ears.

Zack Barton
Barton Interactive
(833) 442.6853 // office
(408) 910.7750 // mobile
https://bartoninteractive.com

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Just keep it, the costs (probably a few dollars yearly) should outweigh any potential downsides of giving up the domain and potentially losing the value. If you really are encouraged to get rid of the domains look into how many incoming links those redirecting domains have. If they're all absolutely dead you might as well get rid of them, but in most cases, I would always recommend keeping them until eternity.

[WebDaytona]

Keep it.

[Advanced-Air-Ambulance]

An old domain may have gathered many useful links that can boost your main domain's profile. I vote keep.

[victor.celer]

If the domain is decades old it can have high DA. I guess there are many links to those old domains as well. So, I do recommend keeping them unless you did a study and found that they don't attract any traffic. However, that's very unlikely.