Parked Vs Addon/Redirect Domain

[KempRugeLawGroup]

We have an old site we are trying to figure out what to do with it. Right now, we have it as a parked domain, but were considering changing it to an addon domain with a redirect. I have no reason why I chose parked vs addon, other than I had to pick one. Is one superior than the other? What are the pro's and con's for these?

Thanks,

Ruben

[Everett]

Hello KempRugeLawGroup,

If the old domain had external links pointing to it that are relevant for another domain you may want to consider 301 redirecting it at the page level. It may be too late for that, however, if it has been parked for awhile.

Mass 301ing an entire domain to a single page on another domain (e.g. the home page) is just going to treat the old domain URLs like 404s instead of passing on any pagerank from external links to the old domain. You could do this for user experience, but it wouldn't help for SEO (probably wouldn't hurt though, unless the old domain had spammy backlinks or an existing penalty).

If the old site had a penalty, spammy backlinks, or no backlinks, I would just leave it parked to make things easier until you figure out what to do with it.

However, if it has good backlinks that could be sending visitors who are relevant to your new site to a "parked" page I would think about redirecting them to the new site.

I hope that helps and will leave this open for discussion from others in case there are differing opinions.

[Anti-Alex]

If the new website is related to the old website, redirect as many individual pages to the new site as possible. Match up the pages and that'll create the most seamless way of moving the site from the old to new. All your old traffic will end up in the right place on the new site. Benefits there include any SEO or inbound links will pass pagerank over to the new site as well giving you a bit of a boost.

If the old site has nothing to do with the new site but it's your new brand, company, or project that you want to draw attention do, just do a straight 301 redirect and explain that it's a new project somewhere on the page. Any existing traffic from the old site will follow through and learn what you're currently up to on the new site.

If the old domain has no traffic, no SEO, no inbound links, and really doesn't have anything to offer, keep it parked.