Redirect Multiple Domains

[propertyshark]

This is a follow-up question from one posted earlier this month. I can't linked to that because it's a private question so I'm trying to summarize it below.

We have a number of domains – about 20 - (e.g. www.propertysharp.com) that point to our main domain ip adress (www.propertyshark.com) and share the same content. This is no black-hat strategy whatsoever, the domains were acquired several years ago in order to help people who mistyped the websites url to reach their desired destination.

The question was whether to redirect them to our main domain or not. Pros were the reportedly millions of incoming links from these domains - cons was the fact that lots of issues regarding duplicate content could arise and we actually saw lots of some pages from these domains ranking in the search engines.

We were recommended to redirect them, but to take it gradually. I have a simple question - what does gradually mean - one domain per week, per month?

[propertyshark]

We did not get more details on that - I assume it may raise some flags if you suddenly redirect 20 domains. I'm not sure if or why is that, that's why I decided to ask a follow-up question.

Btw, thank you both for your replies!

[john4math]

Definitely 301 redirecting them is the way to go.  Make sure each page on the redirected domain maps to the corresponding page on your main domain.

It sounds like you know a few pages on these domains you want to redirect that rank well.  I'd pick one of these domains to start with, and redirect all of its pages to the corresponding pages on your main domain.  Wait until Google reindexes those pages that rank well, and try those searches again.  That page on your main domain should rank at least as well as the page on the old domain, and hopefully even better since their link juices are consolidated.

If you're highly risk-averse, you can continue doing this domain by domain.  Otherwise, you can batch them and do several at once, or just redirect the rest of them.  Just make a note of the searches where pages on these other domains were doing well, and check that those pages on your main domain does just as well after those pages get reindexed.  Personally, if it worked for one, I'd feel pretty safe doing all of them, and then keep checking the SERPs afterward to make sure nothing bad happened.

How gradual the process is will be determined by how quickly the pages are reindexed.  If they're reindexed quickly, you'll be able to see if it's working and can keep moving forward.

[RyanKent]

What was the idea behind gradually redirecting the traffic? I am not aware of any harm with fully implementing the redirects right away.

You can also add the canonical tag to the duplicate pages indicating the URL of the page on your main site. This would allow you to keep your existing sites if you so desired, but only having your main site appear in the search index.