Yes it will.

Hi Mathew,

There was an interesting discussion on this subject on another question thread here

There was no definite yes or no to your question, some people experienced the penalty being passed over and others didn't. In theory, if 301's passed penalty, webmasters could 301 all their "dead" sites to competitors and this would be a mission for Google to control should the 301 pass over the penalty.

Based on Rands comments in that thread, he believes 301's dont pass on any penalties and it may be due to other factors that contribute to the low rankings on the new sites since implementing the 301.

My suggestion would be to go ahead and do the permanent redirect. As you say, you cant afford loosing return customers. Let us know how it goes.

Greg

Great insight John, thanks for the words of wisdom.

What are you thoughts regarding sub-domains? You could have also created a sub-domain and geo targeted a specific country for each.

Example:

www.website.com (Global)

uk.website.com (UK Only)

au.website.com (Australia Only)

I'm not sure if sub-domains or new domains have more weight than the other, but it makes sense to keep the site and brand as a whole intact rather than creating new domains and just geo target each for their respective country/audience.

Greg

Its not bad at all in my opinion, especially if its a sub domain.

All its going to do is pass on SEO value to your root domain.

If you'd like to keep the link juice on your blog intact, you could make the menu links no-follow.

Greg