I own a very big directory with a huge potential (36K+ active listings). I decided to invest time, money and effort into this directory - because I believe it can be good. Current domain: www.addurl-free.com Maybe change domain to: www.clesto.com I originally decided to use AddURL-Free.com because of the keywords in the domain. It ranks #1 for add url free in Google as well as yahoo and this brings some good traffic (took 17 months to reach). But addurl-free.com is not brandable, it sucks and almost looks like spam. Clesto.com can be branded, right? Is Clesto.com a good domain for branding? Should I change if I think about the future? But also consider this: 27K backlinks, DMOZ listed, PR5 with PR4 internal pages, 17K Alexa, 41K indexed pages in Google, domain age is 17 months ... all that will hurt real bad if I change. And if I change should I 301 or make a SEO'd satellite page to drive traffic? What is your suggestion?
I do like Clesto for its brandability... I guess if this is something you really want to do you'll just have to do a 301 and take your chances! I don't know if the hit will be real major or not, i mean SEs are pretty darned smart for computers! Good luck!
I would suggest keep www.addurl-free.com as the website and for email etc purpose use clesto.com If you already have a PR5 site why change and take the pain to make another one?
If it isn't broken, why fix it? You know the damage changing domains will do to your rankings. My own suggestion would be to create a new directory while keeping the old one and advertise 'Clesto' from the addfree-url.com directory. For one thing, it will keep your options open on what you do with regards paid / free / whatever, not to mention that the current directory has so much link power to throw at 'Clesto'.
1. Keep the old as it is 2. Create the new one with better web design, add more categories and anything else that will make it look more advanced 3. Try to redirect the visitors of old site to new one with "New set of services to our new site" or similar but i think you get the idea You never abandon and have second thoughts about things they bring you traffic. You just use them. Internet users are clever enough and they get the message. "This is old ... this is new"
The PR5 is not a problem. I will get it to PR5 or PR6 again after I changed it. The long term project for the site is a user driven site were users rates, reviews and recommends links. Maybe even with memberships, a point system and more. I want it site to go viral once I added the features. I want the site to be branded and go viral and I feel that with the current domain that is not possible. I have to think about this.
Why not keep both domain names. This way you will not lose all that you have done as far as the PR and the traffic is concerned and you can work on the new name too.
I think the smartest way to go about this is to do as several suggested and try to create the clesto site the way you want it(i.e. features etc.) and then use the leverage you have with the addurl site to entice the addurl traffic to a "new and improved" service. Or maybe use it as a premium service? Either way, you don't want to completely get rid of the addurl pr and traffic which could happen to some extent with a 301. Take advantage of what you have and the eyes you already garner and put the new site in front of them all without taking addurl away. I think you'd be surprised with how quickly most of the addurl users switch over.