Where should I 301 redirect my current domain to given this situation?

[MeasureEverything]

My company currently owns three apartment complexes. They are within blocks of each other. Only one of them has a website (believe it or not). The one that has the website ranks fairly well, but only because it has been around for a long time. There have not been any intentional SEO efforts. I have stumbled across a wonderful, keyword rich & location specific, domain name but I have a question. Here's the scenario:

We have:

Apartment Complex 1 - www.apartmentcomplex1.com  (longstanding website)

Apartment Complex 2 - No website.

Apartment Complex 3 - No website.

We are considering buying the domain: www.KeywordRichDomain.com. The new URL structure would be:

www.KeywordRichDomain.com/apartment-complex-1

www.KeywordRichDomain.com/apartment-complex-2

www.KeywordRichDomain.com/apartment-complex-3

Should I 301 redirect www.apartmentcomplex1.com to the new root domain or should I redirect it to the appropriate sub-folder of the new domain?

Putting myself in the user's shoes, if I were expecting to go to the apartmentcomplex1.com domain, I would want to land on the sub-folder because it's relevant to what I was looking for. However, I don't think people will directly type in the old URL. I think people will be searching for apartments in the area and I want all three of our complexes to show up. By redirecting the good domain to this new root domain, it should help us start out life pretty well in the SERPS. (my assumption at least).

Thoughts?

[webmethod]

Hi,

I see a couple of assumptions in your question - I would say that having a "keyword rich domain" is becoming a less significant ranking factor in SERPs so I wouldn't base the migration of an existing website that performs pretty well on the potential of a new domain targetting certain KWs.

Secondl assumption is that your existing domain is ranking purely because it's older. There are likely to be other factors at play here - particularly backlinks.

However, I realise that you need to restructure the website and moving to a single domain with the complexes on subdirectories makes sense architecturally. You might well see a drop in rankings certainly in the meantime while you do this migration so if this is a key acquisiton channel, then investigate PPC options to bolster your traffic.

As for the 301 - I agree it makes sense to 301 to the complex subdirectory for a user, however in Webmaster Tools Google doesn't support the migration of one domain to the subdirectory of another domain. This means it won't be as seamless as if you migrate to the root of the new domain.

One way around this would be to redirect the old domain to the root domain, but provide very clear navigation on how to get to the relevant apartment complex to a user. As far as a user is concerned, I would see this as an acceptable solution.

George

[MeasureEverything]

George,

Thank you for your feedback. I agree with you that exact match domains are likely becoming less significant, but I thought I remembered from MozCon that case studies, as of that date (earlier this year), proved that EMDs were still resulting in clearly higher rankings. I'll have to go back to the videos.

I agree with you about the age assumption. I wasn't stating that the age, itself, was the ranking factor. I meant that because it had been around for so long that natural optimizations were occurring (natural linking, natural content, etc...). This wasn't intentional though. It just occurred through the normal course of business. According to the MozBar, while on the home page, it has a Domain Authority of 19 and a Page Authority of 31 with 266 links coming in from 13 root domains.

Thank you for sharing about the Google Webmaster tools restriction. I was unaware of that, but it makes sense. I could see why that would be abused, even though in this case I have a legitimate reason for doing so. I will ensure that clear navigation is in place on the home page.

Thanks again George!

-Alex