Hey, my blog has been penalized by Google, most likely from backlinks and I've lost a lot of traffic from Google. I plan on changing the domain name to avoid the penalty. Will this work? And should I use a 301 redirect on the old domain name to the new one or will that be a bad idea? I don't mind starting over with a new domain and obtaining new backlinks.
I'm going to make a logical guess and say "no". The site URL is secondary to the content, so moving the content won't make Google think it's a new site - the engine will instead recognise the content and say "Oh, it's moved, so we need to move everything... including the penalties". As I say, it's a guess as I have no experience of doing this. It just seems FAR too simple a method to avoid penalties, so can't possibly work, in my opinion. If it did, all those spam sites would move all the time!
301 redirect passes the previous links, and thus the penalty. IF you don't mind starting over from square one and ditching a domain with backlinks can I have it? It's always easier to fix the problem than to start over so I'd love a domain name with age and link equity.