Best way to phase out a website about a general topic and use different niche domains

I have website A which is about dogs, cats and monkeys. It ranks fairly well on search engines because it's been around for years and have a nice number of incoming links too. Will appreciate your suggestions about the following issue:

- Created website B about dogs only and now has authority for related terms;
- Created website C about cats only and now is ranking highly for related terms;
- Created website D about monkeys only and it's doing fine too;

Was thinking of phasing out website A, which still has a fair share of traffic but ranks lower in general to other websites who are more topic specific.

What shall I do?

(1) Leave website A active and have the possibility of ranking with 2 domains on search engines for similar terms?
(2) 301 redirect dog pages from website A to B, cat pages from website A to C, monkey pages from A to D?
(3) OR any other option?

Thanks in anticipation for your suggestions. Would like to know what will be the best solution in terms of SEO (within search engine guidelines ofc).

If I owned those sites and they all had different content, if the content topics were closely related (for example pets) and these sites had different link sources, I would redirect B, C, and D to A.

That would combine your linkstrength, make a huge authority site for "pets". My bet is that you would rank higher everywhere. If you move from position 7 to position 3 there is a huge increase in traffic.

Personally I think I'd be inclined to leave it there.
I would have recommended "B" but - if those sites are doing so well, you probably don't need it and you may not quite manage to "pass on" all the merits which are making that original site rank so well.

Of course - it depends on if/how the sites are "monetized" and what sort of conversions/income you get from that original site... It might be worth investigating the longtail keyword successes on that site and updating the content slightly to target/take advantage of them.

<edit>I like Egol's idea too (Cross-posted - lol)</edit>

I would not redirect A to B,C and D if A gets its links from the same sources as B,C and D. Merge websites when you can unite linkstrength or produce a site with supersize content.

Keep it active, keep the content uniquely it's own get a couple of links to your other sites BUT make these as display ads [with CSS text links] and advertise site A as a Pet advertising portal...

brings in revenue so you can buy links elsewhere or make better linkbait.

I'll be your first customer.

Thanks all for you comments

Prof. Stan wht's wrong with u?
He is a starter of this thread so he is just posting to appreciate our
efforts then how it's post spamming let me know

I am sorry in advance as this is an out of topic post from me, so i have no probs if the mods decide to delete it after some time though.

Coming on to Prof. stan, i do appreciate your concern regarding the forum spamming but there are certain rules which though might not be there in written, but they are to be followed nevertheless.

I am no mod or an admin, but i feel at least the O/P and that too a newbie, does have a right to thank the people who help him, so by no means that is a spam....

Its a different story if someone just drops in to say "thanks" with the sole intention of posting uselessly.

Dont feel bad, but i can point quite a bit of your posts which should come within the rules which you have made to mark something as a spam.

And what i felt bad here was, you hit the spam button as well as you disagreed with a newbie on a useless point.

So, all in all, i'll just suggest not to misuse your privileges against a genuine poster especially a newbie, though i myself admit, sometimes a mistake does happen marking something as a spam. ( It must be giving headaches to mods, sorry guys for that)!

hehe the help people like me get here is invaluable, so I felt I should thank those who gave me their comments! I don't care about any rep ... did not even know it exists in the first place! Chill out lol