301 redirecting staff Domain to Company Domain

[khi5]

My colleague owns a domain (A) for about 10 years that he does not use. The domain's content is the same as my company's website (B) content. 
Question: Can I 301 redirect domain A to domain B's homepage or is it better he just closes down his website since this would not be SEO best practices?

thank you

[MoosaHemani]

If I would be at your place I would see the link profile of the staff domain and see if there are any valuable links on that domain? In-case of yes I would prefer to redirect instead of turning down the domain.

On the other hand if the staff domain’s link profile is spamy and risky then I would prefer to go with the other option and that is to turn down the domain at the first place.

Hope this helps!

[khi5]

thank you. So what you saying is: Google will not mind 301 re-directing 1 entire website to the homepage of another domain within the same industry? The website does not have a worthwhile link profile (not spammy either), but I thought that given the site is rather old and has developed a certain level of trust (I guess) it may be worthwhile doing the 301 redirect.

Any thoughts?

[Houses]

I'd 301 it if it has trust and no spam.

I'd look at doing the redirects to the most relevant pages though rather than just the home page - as you say the content is similar to what you have - it shouldn't be too hard to match up the important pages.

[khi5]

thank you for the insight. Let me ask you a related question: I own a website in a non-related field. The website is not doing anything for me, but is a trusted quality site. Can I redirect that website's homepage to my other website's homepage and otherwise just close that site down? Or, since the 2 websites have nothing in common (1 is about oranges the other about apples so to speak) would this be a move that could be considered manipulative and I shouldn't be doing?