301 redirect from sites closing down

[ocelot]

Hi

We have around 10 supplementary sites that have links to our site which are now closing down but are out of our control.  We could have access to their domains so how could we maintain the link juice from these old sites which are going to our new site?

However there will be no websites left on these old supplementary just domain names

[JaneCopland]

Hi,

If possible, you can definitely 301 redirect these domains. There does not need to be active websites on the domains to do this - a redirect will tell Google that the site's content has moved to the new location, and to assign the majority of the authority from the old site / domain to the new location. It would be beneficial if you were putting something relevant to the supplementary sites' content on the new / hub site so that it's truly a case of content having moved - Google will often dull the benefit of a 301 if there is no sign that real content has moved from one location to another. This is partially to stop people from buying expired domains and redirecting them for the SEO benefit alone. If you're unable to do this however, it's still a good move to redirect the closed sites so that any SEO benefit and any type-in traffic is directed to the best location. Redirection also means that the closed sites will drop out of Google's index quickly and any relevant rankings they had that could belong to the existing site should change to the existing site quickly as well.