How to Redirect Old Domain to a New Domain?

[Dino64]

One of my clients has chosen a new domain for her website so we will redirect the old domain to the new. I understand that once redirected, most of the authority built up over the years for the old domain will pass through to the new domain. Is this correct?

Can this be done through the Wordpress dashboard, say with a plugin perhaps? I have a plugin called 404 Redirected I was going to try to use for this purpose.

Finally, the client has other domains (5 total) she has used for one reason or another. She wants to consolidate all of them and have everything redirected to her new domain. Do you see any downside to this in terms of crawling, Google trust and authority? I know there are some user experience issues to deal with, but we're addressing those. I just don't want to do anything that may cause Google not to trust the new domain.

Thanks, Dino

[MickEdwards]

If the aged domain has links going deeper than the homepage you should look at redirecting those pages/directories directly to their associated pages/directories on the new site.  Otherwise all passed link equity will go to the homepage.

[RyanPurkey]

Yes. Redirection done correctly will pass most authority over to the new site. Ideally you should modify your .htaccess file as it is a root level file that's accessed prior to your CMS. Redirecting multiple domains is an acceptable practice as well, and there are no down sides other than the warnings and precautions that should be taken when doing any amount of redirecting. To really help amplify the new domain, it'd be best to work at promoting the change via bloggers and press she's worked with in the past as much as possible. That way there aren't just technical signals that the domain is new, but PR, link, and social as well.  Cheers!