To what extent does a 301 pass domain trust / link juice.

[l3msip]

I have a client with a pr4 2yr old site. The pr and age are the only good things going for it.

The design sucks balls and the domain itself is pretty much trademark infringement, as well as just sucking all together (trademark infringing long ass .biz ffs!).

I am redeveloping their site, on a new domain, and intend to 301 the old one across.

What im not sure about, is the extent that 'domain trust' is passed with the 301. I could sling tons of links at the old domain no problem, will i be able to do the same with the new one? I presume its a good idea to wait until the old domain has disappeared from the serps, so i know google is aware of the redirect.

Alternatively, do 301's pass link juice 100%, in which case i could just build links to the old domain anyway, as it is redirected?

Never moved a large established site before, anyone with experience doing so, any insight would be appreciated.

 

[clyde]

I don't know about juice (for ranking) but it will pass trust rank.

It means new site won't be sandbox'ed or dance'd around.

 

[SniperRyan]

I mirrored a 20,000 page website from an established (but shitty and risky domain) to a freshly reg'd domain, and redirected via 301 matching the URLs 1-to-1, i.e. not just everything from Site1.com to homepage of Site2.com, but like:

site1.com -> site2.com
site1.com/page20 -> site2.com/page20

It took roughly a year for Google to assign the old PageRank to the new site (and bump it up one notch) and a little less for Yahoo to recognize the majority of the links from Site1 as belonging to Site2.

During that time I did some link-building on both sites, but moreso on Site2. I've heard rumors that Google won't apply 100% of the authority from Site1 for months or years (if ever), and in my experience that's probably accurate. Figure maybe 75% of the "juice" will carry over after 12 months. But who knows, I've seen redirection schemes that take full effect in much less time than that.

In your case I'd build links to the new domain. Signal to Google that the other domain is no longer in use and that this new domain is gaining popularity and deserves the old domain's rankings. Assuming the 75% rule is true, you'd be getting more benefit linking to Site2 anyway.