Both sites in serps after a 301

[321]

I might be missing the boat on this, why would you want to link to the OLD page instead of the new? This would be some good info to know, since I usually think to link to the new page to get that indexed quicker and get the old page out of there.

Linking to the new page leads to Google finding a duplicate of the old page. That is terrible. The only way the old page will fall out of the index then is by age... four or more months later. Your new duplicate will rank badly (if at all) during the time the old one stays in the index. Additionally the new duplicate will not get the PR of the old one, because Google will have no way to know about the redirect.

The faster/safer way to proceed is for Google to only find your new pages via redirects from the old URLs. Now Google will know that every single new page is a non-duplicate, and should get the PR and approximate ranking of the old page, and that the old URLs should be removed from the index promptly.

[Prenut]

Linking to the new page leads to Google finding a duplicate of the old page. That is terrible. The only way the old page will fall out of the index then is by age... four or more months later. Your new duplicate will rank badly (if at all) during the time the old one stays in the index. Additionally the new duplicate will not get the PR of the old one, because Google will have no way to know about the redirect.

The faster/safer way to proceed is for Google to only find your new pages via redirects from the old URLs. Now Google will know that every single new page is a non-duplicate, and should get the PR and approximate ranking of the old page, and that the old URLs should be removed from the index promptly.

While the theory behind this seems ok, I have found this unnecessary. Granted my sample size is just a few sites, so ymmv. I have had no problems linking to the new content immediately, and in fact have gone ahead and changed the urls on existing links when at all possible. Google recognized the redirects on the core pages within a few days, and all of the pages within a month.

[Prenut]

And to add another reason why you shouldn't avoid linking to the new pages.... It's likely that Google will recognize the redirects page by page rather than as a whole. What this means is that they are going to discover the new pages on which redirects weren't yet recognized through your internal linking structure on your new site. Some of the pages are going to be found before redirects are recognized, so there is little point in avoiding pointing links to the new pages.