Is a 301 redirect RISKY?

I'd love some insight on this. I have been reluctant for years to 301 our old domain to the new domain we'd like it to become (for branding, marketing and logical reasons). The reason is a typical one. The domain is 7 years old with about 10 thousand websites linking to it. Does anybody really know if SERP strength will truly be inherited within a reasonable time-frame? Also, it's unrealistic to contact thousands of websites and get them to actually update the domain in their link....so does Google know this and handle it logically and fairly? Does the old link (homepage and internal pages) adhere to the 301 redirect, regardless of the old link being present on thousands of websites??

The backlinks will transfer they link juice to where ever you redirect. That really is a standard technique.
I think you will lose the bonus of the old domain, though, if your new domain is much younger. My guess is that you'll rank somewhat lower than before with the new site - for now - and the rankings will slowly climb up again over time.

If you can use an old domain for your site, do so, but apparently you've got good reasons to prefer the new domain and thus it's better to transfer all backlinks to the new one rather than to leave them unused.

Domain age refers to the age of the links pointing to a domain rather than just the age of the domain (based on domain registration).

So as a 301 will redirect all the LJ and PR to the new domain, it'll slowly transfer the old domain age as well.

So don't worry, go for the 301 and have patience, hopefully things will turn out to be just fine

This is totally new to me... can you define domain age if it is not dependent on how long a domain has been registered and not parked but if it depends on the age of links?
I'm always happy to learn something new, but I think that domain age and backlinks are not related at all...

Hey Chris,

I once read a post here of EGOL or Fathom, where he stated that the age of a domain refers to the age of the links pointing to the domain and not just how long the domain has been registered.

Sorry, I am unable to locate the post right now. Any further discussion on this issue would be very helpful.

Thanks !

A 301 redirect is not risk at all.

To be safe, create one for one of your pages and use this tool here - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/check-server-headers/

Make sure that it works and that you get a 301 response in the server header then go for it on all of your pages.
Any page that is indexed should be redirected to the most relevant new page.

This is just good practice.

Yes, 301 is ok, no hassles as such, Just, As a matter of fact, Dont expect the changes to happen quiet soon.

After the cralwers recognize 301, there might be a temporary dip in SERPS, traffic and all.. but that wud be just temporary and shall recover from that very soon.. The complete TR and PR including the backlinks will be X'ferd.

However if multiple 301's are made to a single domain, there remains a chance of losing the TR and hence SERPS..

Regards
LKS

Is 301 more applicable for pages getting redirected with in the domian or more for pages across the domian ie., redirection from one domain to another domain name ?????????

My site is a directory that has 5,507,305 internal pages and 969,855 inlinks (according to yahoo's linkdomain command).

It's a big risk, hoping that the 301 redirect will work throughly and effectively on such a large site with so many backlinks.

If it doesn't level out in the SERPS in 90 days can I 301 back to the old domain

If you redirect olddomain.com/(.*) to newdomain.com/$1 then nothing really changes, except for the domain name. The number of pages is not important, IMHO.

Anyone with new ideas on the open question of domain age?