Multiple sites in the same niche (Should we redirect these to our Main Site)

[CMcMullen]

I will keep this short and sweet.   We have some websites in the same niche area but want to focus only on our newest site (basically all the information that was being posted on the other sites will now be part of our new site)

This will save us a lot of time and increase our focus on 1 entity.   Should we redirect these website with a 301 redirect to the specific categories that they focus on in the new site?  or should we redirect to the main domain.

[RyanPurkey]

I think redirecting the information to the most applicable place on the new site will do the most good. It also gives you another reason to go around at the link building / networking stage to say, "Hey, our old site X is now pointing to our new site Y.com/X while still being relevant to the sources that originally linked to X.

that the new site increases your time and productivity should go towards the old area being updated more frequently as well, which will further help it to perform better.  Cheers!

[CMcMullen]

Would redirecting at the domain level with a 301 redirect be the best way to do this.....

Redirect OLDSITE.com to NEWSITE.com/categoryabouttopicofoldsite

[RyanPurkey]

You'd want to get the redirect to go to the most applicable place as possible so if it's OLDSITE.com/apple it'd be best to send it to NEWSITE.com/category/apple if you have that level of information from old to new.  Otherwise, domain to category would be second best. Third, domain to domain.