I am helping a friend who runs a bbq business that is over 50 years old. 4 months ago someone made them a website under an inferior domain name to others that are available. The website has zero SEO and zero Backlinks currently. My question is, should I build his new site under the old domain name since it is 4 months old and is being indexed by google (poorly), or just scrap it and start from the ground up with the better domain name and risk being "sandboxed" or other nightmares that lurk out there for a new domain name and website?
If the old one doesn't have very many links, and it's indexed by Google poorly, just use the new one if it's a much better domain name.
ya, 4 months isn't that long... and indexing poorly doesn't say anything positive about not using the other domain name you're planning on using... the old one is nothing if you don't think you can work it in a marketing perspective... you might as well start from scratch if you're practly junklisted as-is..
can't you just use both with redirection from one of them? some visitors might already bookmark your site with the old name.
I think you should just get a better domain name if your friend's business is going to be long term, then from your old domain, redirect it to your new domain name for a few months, then try to sell it off or use it for cash parking.
The most important question is the domain garbage? Don't worry about the indexing bcause you can build by submitting your site and creating backlinks. But if the domain doesn't make sense for the business get a new one its' just $7
Thanks! I am just going to go with the improved domain name and 303 the old one when the new one is launched. Also, how difficult would it be if we purchased a domain name that was already in use for a bbq place that had the same name but went out of business in a different state? Would the old backlinks give us negative juice? Would it be hard to pickup keywords in the new location based on it being indexed heavily in the old geographic location? I am actually in one of the largest bbq markets in the US and there is two very famous BBQ places here, both rank well on google. The average amount of backlinks given for each in various tools is 2100 for the 1st and 1700 for the 2nd. Is this an insurmountable goal to think that I can create more backlinks than them and compete, especially when they havn't built any backlinks, these all came naturally? My friends business, and these business have all been open longer than 50 years. Thanks for all the help in advance!
Unless this is a typo, I'm pretty sure you want to do a 301 redirect. 303 is not supported by all browsers. You absolutely can generate that many links, and while natural links are clearly preferred by Google, placed links have the advantage that you can choose your target keyphrases and rank for variations. It will take some work to unseat established sites for main keywords. Anything is possible, especially beating those that aren't trying. As far as the old domain-yes, this will work well, the state it was in shouldn't matter at all, but if the domain was dropped, there is a likelihood that the old links will be disregarded. However, you may "recover" those links over time, as they may be reindexed.
It wansn't I typo either, I thought that was what to use. Now I know. Thank you very much. I appreciate you taking the time to post and providing such great information.
4 months old really is not long, so u are better of starting with another domain which is better in this case.