BIG CHANGE - 301 Main site to new domain

[ScottBaxterWW]

Hi Guys,

Were wondering what to do about our main domain name, we were ranking quite high for our main keyword and before Christmas our site dropped to 10th and we have been there for a while - last week our site dropped again onto the second page.

The worrying thing is now our main domain name is now ranking 1 place above another domain name that we don't really use but its an exact match domain name for our target keyword. This exact match domain has hardly any links pointing to it and it currently has a 22 domain authority.

We are wondering if we 301 our main site to this exact match domain would it rank higher than the top of the 2nd page where we are now for our main domain.

Cheers.

[Devin_Anderson]

It depends on how competitive your SERP is. If it isn't very competitive then a 301 from an exact match domain might be enough to skootch you up a few places.

If you're gonna do the 301, you'd probably be better off 301'ing the site you don't use onto your main one.

Something else to think about is why your rankings may have been dropping. Have you been making any changes to your site? Have your competitors made changes? Have any new competitors arisen? If you made any changes yourself then correcting that should be your first priority. If it's competitors, then it's back to linkbuilding with you!

[ScottBaxterWW]

Hey man, thanks for the response.

I'd say its quite competitive and yes there are some new people that have suddenly popped up on the first page.

The annoying thing is a lot of the websites that are ranking on the first page have very bad links a lot of them are blog comments and other rubbish.

We have changed some of the content but only to make it more SEO friendly...

[Devin_Anderson]

hey no problem. Sounds like it's just gonna be a matter of beating those guys then.

They may have lots of rubbish links, but, chances are, these links are not the reason they are beating you. Even blog comment-spammers will occasionally stumble across a gold mine. Under all the messy links they probably have a handful of good ones that are doing all the work. 80/20 and all that.