Changing domain, dose it hurt the site authority ?

[dino27]

i have a site that is pr3. its been alive since 2008. Its my best money making site.
although it dose not have lots of backlinks, its pretty successful.

the problem is that the domain is really NOT keywords rich.
this really hurt my seo.

so i bought a much better keywords optimized domain from someone. it has my main targeted keyword in it.
its registered since 2004, but it was always just a parked domain. no content or backlinks.

now, i redirected the main page to the new domain. the question i have is, how is google going to respond to that ?
will i gain my authority and trust again? what about PR ?
would it have any negative effects ?

that crucial for me, so your input would be appreciated !

[paulgl]

Not having keywords in a domain does not hurt your SEO.
SEO is what you do to the site.

If you do a 301 redirect, google will think the site moved, and
everything with it. Over time, it will need to stand on its own.
The effect of the old domain will wear off.

Paul

[Adam H]

Make sure all the pages on your old site are redirected , Using the correct redirect will do that for you but its best to check.

Redirects will indeed help you move over to the new domain and gain your authority back over time however you will need to continue with a good link building. The affects of a redirected domains can some times get weaker over time if people start to think that the site that they were linking to no longer is the same site, links can be lost etc.

Also make sure you have done the domain name change in google webmaster tools, it will help google speed up the process.

Its possible that you may see traffic spikes up and down until things settle.

Personally i would have never changed domains if the other domain was doing the job, SEO doesnt happen just because you have a keyword domain.

But in general , you should be fine if its done correctly

[dino27]

thanks guys.

1) how long would it takes me to gain all the authority back ?

2) what if i go back to the old one ? will it still have his authority ? (it has been redirecting for a few weeks now)

3) the problem is, very small % of the traffc is coming from SE .
most are people that are within the niche , and knows about the site already, or read though forum and review. SE wise, its not great, but since it got PR3 i think it would be easy to go and promote it aggressively.
with that in mind, would you still think i should stick to the old one?

what would you do if you were me ? which domain would you stick to ?

[Adam H]

Originally Posted by dino27

thanks guys.

1) how long would it takes me to gain all the authority back ?

2) what if i go back to the old one ? will it still have his authority ? (it has been redirecting for a few weeks now)

3) the problem is, very small % of the traffc is coming from SE .
most are people that are within the niche , and knows about the site already, or read though forum and review. SE wise, its not great, but since it got PR3 i think it would be easy to go and promote it aggressively.
with that in mind, would you still think i should stick to the old one?

what would you do if you were me ? which domain would you stick to ?

1. not long, you "may" not even see any difference in actually traffic and as i said before if you continue with good qaulity backlinks it will help you move forward alot quicker.

2. You've made the move, DONT move again .

3. If you are getting a very small amount of traffic from google then there obviously isnt a huge amount of authority or SEO work done on the site in the first place. If i was you i would start learning about SEO rather than looking at a keyword domain and thinking its going to help, work on building this current domain up and increasing traffic , dont worry about Page rank and things like that because if you work on your link building correctly page rank will automatically come.