How to decide on which site to 301 redirect

[Chammy]

Hi there

I'd like your opinions please!

My client currently has their website at

not-very-good-url.it which has a really good link profile

they also have duplicate sites at:

much-better-brand-name-url.it and

much-better-brand-name-url.com

but both these other sites have only a handful of links in.

How important do you think a better brand url is?

And therefore do you think it would be better to 301 to a better brand URL and take the risk that the link profile will get hit? Or leave the main site where it is and 301 the other two to it?

Many thanks

[StreamlineMetrics]

I would suggest 301 redirecting the bad URL to the better brand URL. If the company is based in the US, I would likely recommend using the .com over the .it (unless the .it is part of the brand name like blurt.it). As long as the 301 redirect is put in place correctly and there are no more duplicate sites, then your link profile/organic rankings should not be severely impacted.

[Ties.com]

I wouldn't take this risk unless the much-better-brand-name-url.com is an exact match domain of a high volume keyword.  The only other time I would recommend making this change is if you foresee significant investment in brand building, ie. PR or other activities that will actually create a memorable brand.  If you aren't investing in the brand heavily and are more reliant on keyword based traffic then I would not recommend 301ing.

Although its not typical to lose a lot of value when 301ing you do stand the chance that something could go wrong and not to mention it's usually quite a bit of work to map out all the redirects.

In my honest opinion the return on effort here is not worth the risk.