Page Forwarding

[Sean Williams]

May I canvas opinion of the Forum?

Our main site is being replaced by various niche sites and a different 'main' site (much better name!).
However, our old main site does very well in search engine results, so naturally we'd like to keep those and direct visitors to the appropriate new website (NB, not to a different page on the same old site).
Could I ask for feedback as to which is the best of the following methods of achieving this, bearing in mind the redirects will be more or less permanent -

Clean the page and leave a box with a short explanation and a link to click on

Put a Redirect 301 in the .htaccess file

Clean the page and leave a box with a short explanation and a link to click on, but use javascript or similar to hide the link so as not to risk getting penalised in search engines for too many links to the new site

Or is there a better method?

Advice much appreciated as always.

[RuralWeb]

Our main site is being replaced by various niche sites

Personally I would only do this if they were totally unrealated products - more sites = much much much more work than one big site IMO

[bamboo]

Our main site is being replaced by various niche sites and a different 'main' site (much better name!).

Why not simply add the niche sites and the 'different' main site into the mix?
You can then compete against yourself and knock the opposition down the page. You will also have the perfect testing regime where you can test everything from design, to copy and trial new products without affecting the income from the existing main site.