Best use of an old domain?

[abisti2]

I've discovered that my clients website used to have another domain name, which they still own but don't use.

It's doing OK considering its not been used for a few years - almost 6,000 backlinks showing on Majestic.

So what's the best way of using this for SEO?

I'm presuming some kind of redirecting? A simple redirect of everything on the domain to the new domain index page? Or going trough all the old pages and redirecting them one by one?

[ThomasHarvey]

The biggest benefit would be redirecting old pages to new. If not just redirecting all of the old pages to the new homepage would be ok.

Just make sure that these are the kind of links that you want to have on your domain.

[abisti2]

Thanks Barry, much appreciated!

[becole]

Before you go redirecting 6,000 links from another domain to the site, you need to be very aware that redirecting those could have disastrous results. Not saying that it will, but before you redirect one domain to another you should be looking at those links and determining if they're good, bad, or toxic links.

Depending on the type of links and the topic, etc. of those links you'll want to potentially clean up those links before redirecting all of the domain. For example, you may want to remove the toxic links (ask the site owner to remove the link) and/or disavow those links, as well.

Don't just redirect the domain name without vetting those links first.

[abisti2]

Thanks Bernadette! What would you say is the best way to identify toxic links?