What will happen after I 301 this domain?

[MarieHaynes]

A while back I created a new website.  Somehow my "scratch" copies of the site got indexed even though I didn't have links built to them.  (In the future I will use noindex tags when I am playing around with designing).

Now, I have three versions of the site online...let's call them TheRealSite.com and Practice1.com and Practice2.com.   Practice1.com and Practice2.com now rank #1 for their main keyword.  (It's a relatively uncompetitive niche).  TheRealSite.com is somewhere lower than page 20 despite having an exact keyword match domain name.  I'm assuming that Google considered it duplicate content as it is the exact same thing as Practice1 and 2.

I had considered simply removing Practice1 and 2 from the server, but I was worried that if I did that, I would lose my #1 rankings if TheRealSite didn't recover.

So, what I've done is 301 redirect Practice1 and Practice2 to TheRealSite.  I'm guessing that over time TheRealSite will come back to #1 and then I can just remove the files from Practice1 and Practice2.

Is this the best way to handle this situation?

[SteveOllington]

Have you been link building to the practise sites? If not, don't bother with the 301's at all, just put the real site on to the practice domain that is ranking well (if you're okay with the domain name). Exact match domain isn't everything, and in some instances it can be seen as spammy. Exact match bonus is a lot less now than it was anyway.

[MarieHaynes]

Thanks Steve.  There are no links to either site right now.

[SteveOllington]

Okay yeah, if the domain name is okay for the one that's ranking you could just replace the existing site with the one you want then. I know there is still an exact match bonus for keyworded domains but it's far from the be-all and end-all if everything else is right. And there's plenty of talk of it being worth a lot less now.

Mind you, I've seen some contradicting stuff. On the one hand there's the fact it can improve CTR as people see the keywords they've searched in the domain, but on the other hand it can be seen by some as a bit spammy... although I have no idea what the ratio of the advantage vs disadvantage there would be.

There is a hell of a lot of abuse of exact match domains though so it wouldn't surprise me (and this is only my own humble opinion) if the value of them went down considerably sooner or later.

[MarieHaynes]

The problem is that the domain name is not great.  It's a complicated situation because this is a site that I built for a friend/client and it was a really difficult relationship.  He's now very happy that his business is #1, but it comes up as "ABCWebdesign.com/businessname" as the URL.

His business is seasonal and right now is the busy season.  So, right now my thought was to 301 redirect the ABCWebdesign.com/businessname site to the BusinessName.com site and then if the SERPS have not reversed in a few months I'll just remove the content from ABCWebdesign in the off season.

[SteveOllington]

Ah, tricky situation. Well, if no links have been built to any of the domains and one is ranking at no.1 for this particular keyword, then it would lead me to assume that it would be very easy to get to no.1 for it with the other domain once you have a few incoming links for it.

Therefore, it would seem most logical to build some links for the domain you want to use, and do like you said with the 301 until the proper site domain hits no.1

[MarieHaynes]

Excellent thank you.

[vforvinnie]

Today's Whiteboard Friday post addresses this situation: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday

Since you have identical content on each page and it's basically the same site you could rel=canonical the secondary sites to the original and you should see your original site gain the rankings, while keeping the old sites online for the time being.

Like the others said, just a small amount of link building should let the original site outrank the others.

Cheers,

Vinnie

[MarieHaynes]

[EDIT] Previous answer deleted because I had a brain fart and thought you were answering a different question I asked this morning!  LOL!

Yes, this WBF was very timely!  It sounds like this is exactly what I need to do!