Redirecting 2 aged site to brand spanking new one

[JohnPeters]

Does 301 redircting 2 aged domain to a new one have a compounding effect?

Ive redirected domain #1 to teh new site and my new domain has now jumped to position 6 on Google for the keyword.

I have noticed that the sites above me are all aged domains and some with very few backlinks. Number 1 is 4 years old and 20 backlinks, thats it!

I am wondering, if I redirected a 11 year old domain that is in the same niche, but never really targeteed that same keyword, would that bump my site even higher?

Obviously i am building quality backlinks to the new domain and making sure these are hard to get high quality backlinks.

Thanks for your help guys

[Matt-Williamson]

When you create the 301 redirect are you pointing the whole of the old domain at the new one or are you breaking the redirect down, pointing the old pages at new corresponding ones?

If you are going to redirect your second old site I would point the old content at new corresponding content using a 301 redirect, so that your practice is less likely to look manipulative to Google. In the past spammers have tried to take advantage of 301 redirects  from multiple domains, and as such, if I was in your position I would be careful and break it down. I think you could potentially be on to a winner as you say both sites that your are redirecting targeted different keywords, so you can point it to different sections of content (pages).

Obviously a 301 redirect passes link juice from the old domain to the new one and so it will have an impact on your sites ranking, if the old site had a strong link profile. In theory this would then help your sites ranking, bumping it higher depending on your competitions strength (DA and PA).

[JohnPeters]

Ah yes thats makes sense. Old Domain #1 has 10 pages and Old domain #2 has 20 pages. There are some overlap, but I could still create relevant pages for the redirects.

One question, what should i do with the home pages? Do I 301 redirect both home pages to the home page of the new site?

[Matt-Williamson]

I would point both homepages to the new homepage and I would set the change of address for each of the old sites to the new one in their Google Webmaster Tools.

I think you will find this very informative about 301 redirects (from Google's very own Matt Cutts) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA

[JohnPeters]

Thanks. Yeah I've seen that before.

At the moment all 3 domains are with a different hosting company and all 3 have different Google Webmaster accounts

I guess I put them all on one Google WM account, but should I do anything with the domains themselves?

[Matt-Williamson]

Other than creating your 301 redirects on the two domains there is nothing that you should need to do with the domains themselves.

[JohnPeters]

Or should I build out the 11 year old domain and use it to publish content about my niche and create links going to my sites?

[Webrevolve]

A great answer from Matt in the first instance, well covered.