Redirecting acquired website: DNS or 301?

[vtmoz]

Hi all,

We have taken down some infringing websites and acquired them, so far we made around 40 websites. We are using DNS to land on our website from the acquired. But I've see that recently that DNS is not a redirect and we must 301 redirect from the old site to the new site. Also there is a potential harm in employing DNS method due to the duplicate content that will harm SERP performance severely. Which is the best way? DNS or 301 redirect?

Thanks

[TomRayner]

I'd go ahead and 301 redirect those websites and pages.

With a 301 redirect you will also pass on any link equity the infringing websites once had, which in turn may help your organic ranking performance.

However, in order for that to happen, you need to ensure that you redirect the individual pages on those websites to the most relevant/equivalent versions on your own. Otherwise, you may see those 301 redirects treated as soft 404 errors.

Hope this helps.

[GastonRiera]

+1 to what Tom said.

Also, be careful not to redirect a whole buch of pages/websites to the same page (or the home page).
Here, Matt Cutts said it: 
Is there a limit to how many 301 (Permanent) redirects I can do on a site? - Google Webmaster Youtube Channel

Best luck.
GR.

[ThompsonPaul]

Agree with Tom re getting it done with 301 redirects. The other thing to be very careful about though is that the newly acquired websites don't have major quality issues, especially spammy, manipulative backlink profiles. If the infringing sites were using inappropriate SEO methods and were coming under algorithmic pressure/penalties as a result, those issues will also be passed to your "real" site.

Paul