Closing down two forums recommendations

[TrackMustangsOnline]

A few months ago I got some good advice from the community on what to do with my current forums and I've decided to merge the two small forums into the larger forum and continue to use my existing URL.  See below.

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=528089.msg3746628#msg3746628

So the question I have is what's the best way to have hits on the two small forums I'm closing get to my main forum?

1. One solution is to have a redirect to the main forum.
2. Or should I leave the two existing sites up, they are getting a couple thousand hits a month each, and have a header that instructs visitors to click on it which redirects them to the main site.  This would allow me to explain that the content has moved.  The small sites have been active for 15 months.

The easy thing to do is have a redirect to the main site but I'm hoping the vast experience of others might have a better idea on how to best maximize the views on the small sites.

Thanks for any advice you may have.

Small sites:

http://gt350mustangs.com/

http://s550mustang.com/

Main site:

http://bossmustangsonline.com/index.php

[ApplianceJunk]

they are getting a couple thousand hits a month each

What kind of hits? Spam, bots, real guest, members?

I took a look at the two smaller sites you listed. They don't seem to have any page ranking or much content.
I also google the URL's and it does not seem that either is very well index by google.

IMHO I would move the content to the new site and forward the other two URL's to it.

Best of luck with what ever you decide to do.

[TrackMustangsOnline]

Thanks, I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything since I'm no expert on this.  I've already moved the content that I wanted and restructured the board on BMO.  I'll redirect the sites and be done with it.

[TrackMustangsOnline]

Redirects are in place.  One other question is should delete the Adsense ads from my account that are on the two closed sites?  Or does it matter?  I don't want to mess anything up with Google.

[ApplianceJunk]

I'm no expert either, just posting my opinion.
If the two sites you closed are being redirect how are you displaying Adsense on them yet?

I would set it up so the URL's for the two closed sites automatically forward to the new site.
I believe duplicate content will do you more harm then good with Google.
Once again, just my opinion.

[TrackMustangsOnline]

That's what I was thinking. I was looking at my Adsense dashboard and it's not clear how I delete the ads on the closed sites. Google is a lot smarter than me and I bet they deactivate ads automaticlly but I dont want to leave that to chance.

I was having activity on the closed sites and members were checking for updates but not enough to bother with. I sent an email to all members notifying them of the migration. My host told me it will it will take 24-48 hours for the redirects to be active. I own a couple of other related URLs and I set those to redirect to my main site as well.