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It is a particularly good idea for Print media, since users will have to manually enter the domain name.  In that case, shorter is obviously better.

In online media, where a user can simply click, we've found better results using the primary domain name.  That being said, as long as you aren't doing 301s en masse to the point that Google will think you are exploiting/gaming the system, it is not a 'bad' practice.  Keep in mind, though, that while 301s SHOULD ensure that any link juice developed for the re-directed URL is passed on to the main URL, there is always the risk of less-than-100% transfer, or no transfer whatsoever.

Make sure you consider the risk/reward ratio for this strategy.  Will you generate enough additional penetration because of the use of the shorter re-directed URL to offset the risk of diluting or getting marginal results of out the links/articles/etc?  If so, go for it.  If not, be safe and use the primary URL.  Whatever you do, remember that as Tom said above, quality is key.

But wouldn't (or couldn't) there be a distinct difference between the age of a domain and the age of website existing on that domain?

I like the suggestion of leaving it up for a little while to gain some data, there is a lot of wisdom in that.

As for covering our back, both our site and the competitor rank near the top/middle of page 2 currently, so someone else moving up behind us is not much of a concern.

Well, what if we don't change the registrant info?  Since we are acquiring the entire company, there would be no harm in leaving the reg. data as-is.  It makes sense for search engines to treat newly acquired domains just like new domains, to discourage the purchase and pillaging of defunct, but long-lived domains/websites,

I can see the domain registration info having just a little to no impact, but if Google can see the index history and track that a site has been in consistent operation for 10+ years, that should be a positive in its favor, no?  Logically, I think longevity is a positive trait, though I have absolutely no evidence, other than anecdotal, that SEs agree.

I know that age is not supposed to have an effect, but it sure seems to.  I see a ton of CRAP sites that outrank solid optimized ones, and the only consistent factor I see (in my limited experience) is that the old site has been around for 10+ years.  I totally understand the argument that they've had more time to established a deeper web presence, but when the new site has 3,000 incoming links and higher mRank and mTrust, and the older one has 350 links, without an appreciable difference in the quality of those links, it makes me wonder...

Will 301-ing the old pages (the sites' architectures match up fairly well, so I don't anticipate major problems) basically stack the quality numbers (with, I assume, a little bit of fall-off), or will it be less impactful than that?

One of my customers is buying a competitor.  The competitor has a site that usually ranks just 1-2 spots below the main site that we manage for them (our site has been up for about a year, and their's is 15-years old).

I am wondering what is the best way to consolidate the rankings/websites to take advantage of the purchase of the competitor's web assets.  I would love to leave both sites up and just get 2 top-25 links to our products, but with no more marketing being done under the competitor's name, I assume their rankings will degrade.

Would a basic 301 re-direct on a page-by-page basis be enough to 'steal' all of the juice their domain name/site has built?  Is there some other method of using an older domain to boost the rankings of a newer one (I am assuming they only rank as well as we do because of how long they've been active - all of our metrics are better than theirs across the board).

Thanks for any help/advice the community here can provide!

There is a lot of talk about this all over this site (and other's), but just about every solution mentions using the .htaccess file, which is only a solution for Apache.  My sites are in a shared windows environment, so that won't work for me.  I have access to the IIS manager for the server, and have several page-level redirects in place.

My issue is that I cannot find a clear and easy way to re-direct my root (domain.com) domain, to my preferred specific domain (www.domain.com).  I found a few articles online relating to a URL re-write module for IIS, but am not sure if I will be able to install that on a shared web server.  Is there another way to accomplish my goal of not having 2 indexable versions of my site?  I have rel-canonical tags on every page, but would prefer a more trustworthy and established solution.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

-Dave

It is a particularly good idea for Print media, since users will have to manually enter the domain name.  In that case, shorter is obviously better.

In online media, where a user can simply click, we've found better results using the primary domain name.  That being said, as long as you aren't doing 301s en masse to the point that Google will think you are exploiting/gaming the system, it is not a 'bad' practice.  Keep in mind, though, that while 301s SHOULD ensure that any link juice developed for the re-directed URL is passed on to the main URL, there is always the risk of less-than-100% transfer, or no transfer whatsoever.

Make sure you consider the risk/reward ratio for this strategy.  Will you generate enough additional penetration because of the use of the shorter re-directed URL to offset the risk of diluting or getting marginal results of out the links/articles/etc?  If so, go for it.  If not, be safe and use the primary URL.  Whatever you do, remember that as Tom said above, quality is key.