301 passing authority?

[seoman10]

Does anyone have experience of 301's in connection with SEO or more specifically passing authority?

Recently purchased a small business that had three small websites. My main concern is all three websites do rank for some fairly important key phrases, but there is very little direct overlap.

I was hoping by using 301's I would be able to refocus the authority to get the main site ranking.

[GastonRiera]

Hi there,

I need to clarify that 301 redirections, definitely pass authority. That's not even a discussion.

As you are asking about merging (I guess) 3 smalls websites into a fourth and big one, that's a really tricky question. It depends on many other factors, some are:

• Content matching
• Answering user questions
• Brand relationship

In my experience, doing this kind of merging is a messy process and in many cases, it ends up losing some of the previous rankings/traffic already gained by the small websites.
I'd suggest you focus on improving the main website and, if applicable link to that page from the small websites.
If that overlap is harming your sales, your brand strategy or other marketing efforts, then you should act accordingly. But if these websites are different identities and by themselves bring sales, that overlapping might be beneficial for you in not letting competitors rank there ;).

Hope it helps,
Best luck!