3 Duplicate Sites 301 Redirect Question Options

[DarrenSR]

Hey folks,
I have run across a situation where a business needs SEO for a site but has 2 other exactly identical web sites with different domains. They are all indexed by Google but not yet penalized. I want to 301 redirect two of the sites to the one I am optimizing. My question is, to be safe from a Google penalty how long should I redirect? I want the client to eventually eliminate the hosting for the two domains as it is a wasted expense.

Instead of redirecting would I be better off to just shut the two sites down? ANy suggestions?

[chrishirst]

The 301 should stay in place permanently, simply because if links to the other sites exist they will be reindexed once the 301 is taken down and you can move all the hostnames to one server and still maintain the redirect.
You could shut down the other sites but you would lose any link pop or useful traffic they may well be providing.

[Jill]

You can use the technique in the [url=http://www.highrankings.com/issue060.htm#seo]Redirecting Multiple Domains[/url] article, and all should be fine.

[wholland]

If you don't have your own server, or 2 hosts like required in Jills technique. You can do the following in you htaccess file. Then you can have all your domains at 1 IP, and 1 host.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} www.old_domain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.new_domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^old_domain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.new_domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

This post has been edited by wholland: May 25 2005, 03:47 PM