Should I or shouldn't I 301 redirect?

I'll try to make a long story short.

I've bought a website (selling digital stuff) 2 months ago thinking it was legit and everything but it's only after buying it that I realized that it was all a scam and there was multiple negative forum reviews on Google when looking for the website domaine. Obviously no more complaint and no more negative reviewd of the website appeared on Google after I got it, but the old ones are still there.

My conversion rate is now 0.5 to 1% which I think is pretty low because of this fact. I thought to swtich the domain name, but I was scared to loose the Google SERP, because the website receive 80% traffic from Google and has hundreds pages indexed. I let it go, but the conversion rate never went up after 2 months (the traffic went up though, I guess from buyer referring friends).

Now I have 2 options in front of me:

1. Creating a new domain and simply do a 301 redirect. But am I right to fear that the traffic will drastically go down? I'm not sure how Google reacts to a 301 redirect, does it automaticly change all the indexed page to the new domain website or does it need to delete everything and take months to reindex all the pages with the new domain at the same time killing my ranking?

2. Shoudl I keep the domain like that and hope that one day these old bad reviews on my website vanish from Google?

I guess my real question is, what would be the best way to go to higher my sales at short and long term?

Hope you can help me
Thanks =)

edit: Yeah I forgot to add that according to Google Webmaster Tools, the keyword that attract the most people to my website homepage is my website title of course. But that also mean that these people probably saw all the other links on Google which title is "Site X is a SCAM!!" ...

 

301 redirect is not a miracle like many peoples might though. I have experiences with 301 the whole site many times. Your ranking will drop down for around 3-6 months during the period. It has to be like that because Google want to ensure about the reliability of the permanent move of your site. It not just about took only a few weeks before ranking back. That is the way Google does.

 

Do it. Maybe it'll harm for a while but better for long run.

 

Create multiple profiles, and URL's on the various Web 2.0 properties that let you have the name in the URL & Title such as Myspace, Twitter, Squidoo, YouTube, Digg, Delicious and so on.

Obviously put favorable content on them about your brand, and hit them with backlinks and interlink the profiles.

These will then rank and swamp the top 20 or so results and push the negative stuff back where people won't see it.

 

Google recommends using the 301 redirect if your site has moved permanently. Matt Cutts has a post about 301, you might want to read it: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/the-little-301-that-could/

 

If Google recommends it as swd says, then it shouldn't hurt you.

 

Hey that looks like a good idea but can you give me some more details, Im not quite sure I understand what I should do. Should just create multiple account and put my website name as my name for each one or put my website in the title of the articles? Ive never used any of the website you mentionned except for youtube and digg, is myspace the same as facebook i just create a profile with my website url?

 

It took a while, but it worked for me.

 

I believe doing 301 redirection is best thing to do in your site.

 

Yes that's correct, then you get:

These are fairly powerful web 2.0 properties, and with your company name in the URL and page Title it doesn't take much in the way of backlinks to get them ranking for a search of your brand/domain name. You control the content, which of course you make positive with a link back to your site.

This will push the negative stuff back off the front page where it's far less likely to be found, customers will also find it reassuring you have an active web presence on all these big sites they are familiar with.

 

Thanks a lot dude! That's gonna help, I'm working on it right now. You said" and so on...", could you let me know what are the other popular website that should figure out on that list?

 

I sent you a PM with a link to one of my personal tools.

 

You might be GOOD in the eyes of SEARCH ENGINE like GOOGLE; but your website DON'T APPEAL too much in most users thats why you have low conversion.

I think you have to take a risk on having 301 redirecting if you are really after of the conversion.