Say you see an old site that is ranking in Google for a lot of terms and there is an opportunity to buy that dmain and redirect it to your site – will you keep those Google rankings?

I’ve not actually bought someone else’s domain for a long term myself, but I’ve redirected plenty.

The way i see it, Google ranks pages because of the trust of a particular domain it’s on, the links that point to it and the content it has on it. If you keep most of these in tact, buying old domains and redirecting them to similar content shouldn’t be a problem.

Even when redirecting pages, I usually ensure page titles and content are very similar on both pages if I want to keep particular rankings.

Be careful though – Google is under no obligation to redirect domains and transfer rankings, and has said as much, as plenty of folk have been involved in bait and switch strategies. AND I would keep such things under the radar as possible, and I’d also worry about changing the actual registrant’s name on the domain in case it’s reset.

Google has offered via webmaster tools a method to validate both sites (not needed in my experience but perhaps worth it if you are shelling out a lot of cash) and redirect via 301 redirects.

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