Using cononical tag instead of 301

[Zing-Marketing]

I've got a bit of an odd situation... My business partner and I split up, and he's going to keep the company name. The website that I built for the company has some links to it, and I've managed to build up some DA and PA.

I want to get the link juice over to my new website. My former partner doesn't care about the link juice, he just wants a website that he can show people. SO, I can't do a 301 or 302, because that would take down the existing site. Can I just use a canonical tag that refers link power to my new website? Would this be harmful in any way? What should I do to accomplish getting the link power without a redirect, and without contacting each person who has given us a backlink?

[Alick300]

Hi Erick,

In your case 301 redirection is the only option because you want to pass link juice canonical doesn't work in that case. If your partner doesn't care about link juice then you can put few do follow anchor text links on important keywords to your website.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

[EGOL]

I believe that canonical does pass link assets.   If you have a canonical on Page A, pointing to Page B, all of the links that go to Page A will start showing in the link profile for Page B in Google Webmaster Tools.

They will show in WMT as.....

Via this intermediate link:  http://yourdomain.com/page-a