Multiple Domains pointing to one site?

[GardenGamer]

Due to takeovers, different strategies and a certain amount of historical lack of control, we have a dozen sites covering many different specialist areas of our business.

To make things easier to manage, we are thinking of merging website content, then repointing some of the domains to the new section within the larger website. The content on each site is all different, but the subject matter is sometimes the same.This will make content, design and management much easier.

We propose to choose the best content, then repoint the underperforming domains. Is there an seo risk of having many domains pointing to one site?

[BryanCasson]

There is no fault in redirecting the multiple domains to one domain, however, do not go overboard, if the domains were never indexed by Google before then rather just get rid of them.

I do however suggest that you never redirect your domains to internal pages or section on another domain, so never redirect http://www.domain1.com to http://www.domain2.com/products as this is bad practice. It should always be http://www.domain1.com to http://www.domain2.com as it may be picked up as spam (this is my opinion)

You can read up a great explanation on redirection in learn SEO > Redirection

[SL_SEM]

I agree with what is noted above, and would only add that you need to be sure that the old domains get rewritten to the new domain, and that you are sending a 301 redirect when this happens.

If you don't set the 301 redirect any pages on the old domains that ranked will not rank on the new domain as they will lose their link and historical google index information, and have to get new links and fight their way back up.

[NakulGoyal]

Well, I think I have a different opinion here. Think from a user's perspective as well as the Search Engine perspective, here's the way I am thinking.

Let's consider I own a small company called ABC offering XYZ services. Now SEOMOZ acquires that ABC and all the services are now offered via Microsoft. There are tons of citations from Wikipedia and other new etc kind of sources mentioning XYZ. They are all linking to XYZ services page on ABC.com

Now when we redirect ABC.com to SEOMOZ.org, its all good. So till this point, we are all good, but if we have lots of deep links to ABC.com from around the web, won't it make sense to have specific redirects in place, redirecting ABC.com/XYZ to SEOMOZ.org/Products/XYZ etc provided there's a page about XYZ on SEOMOZ.

Does that make sense ? This way if I click on to a link about XYZ from somewhere on the web, I reach the desired URL, not just the homepage of a big company or corporation, where I will have to further drill down trying to find the information I am looking for.

[GardenGamer]

Thanks for your advice all of you. Much appreciated.

Nakul has the issue exactly. We have links for a specialist website which ranks well for a specific keyword. We want to put that content within the main site, and then redirect to that section.

From a users point of view it make complete sense, but I was worried that it would be seen as spammy.

Bryan, we are only thinking of resirecting existing websites. Not URLs that have never had any content.

If no-one thinks it might be risky, I suppose we should just get on with it.

Also take the advice on doing the 301's carefully too. Thanks.