301 directing obsolete categories for seo

[swg]

We are about to stop selling a manufacturer which we have had for some time and has always has a steady ranking in google.

We have category/sub categories and products (only about 10)

All of these fit in very well with a general category we have that is much more competitive that we are trying to rank for, my idea is to 301 the whole lot over to the general category and hopefully boost the ranking using any existing authority.

Is this common practise? would like to hear peoples thoughts.

Also I have looked on here and think that I would need to do this manually in .htaccess ...or is there an easier way (code is meaningless to me)

[niki]

If you are about to stop selling all of these products, then my understanding is that if you do a 301 over to either different products or to a category there is a high chance it will be detected by Google (as it is, effectively, a black hat practice) and if so they will apply penalties to your site (including possibly removing entire site from Google).

I know I wouldn't risk it, but your call

[Deefer]

I think you should really only do a 301 if you are swapping like for like i.e. an almost identical page that has genuinely moved, so what you are suggesting would maybe not be a great idea.

[Neil]

Turn the obsolete cat page into a landing page and then redirect from there via a text link,

[swg]

For reference, I did a 301 on about 5 or 6 pages to the main category page.

I have done other work but that page is now a steady 3rd on Google so pretty happy for a good commercial term. I don't know how much the 301's helped if at all and not sure if I would do it again but they don't seem to of hurt.