New Domain Vs. Existing Domain

[Barques-Design]

Hello,

A potential client of mine has been blacklisted because of bad SEO process basically they have over 1,500 toxic links on their site. They have penalised to such an extent that they are now on page 12 for most of their keywords and not ranking well on brand terms either. They are keen to on to a new domain entirely and ditch their current domain when we design their new site. I wanted to get people's opinion on whether this is the best course of action or should we try to salvage the current domain?

Many thanks,

Mat

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Mat,

there is absolutely no need to ditch the current site. A disavow of those bad links will set them back on track again. I have done this for clients with 20 times this number of bad links, and seen complete penalty reversal.

Was it an algorithmic or manual penalty that they had?

-Andy

[Barques-Design]

Hi Andy,

It was an algorithmic penalty. If we disavowed the bad links and updated the website design and content would we see a faster improvement than if we switched domain?

Thanks for your response, Mat

[WesleySmits]

This should give you faster improvement than with a completely new domain.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Mat,

Absolutely. I can take many months to get back to a decent position, whereas following this route you could be back where you are in just weeks.

-Andy

[Dr-Pete]

I'm going to disagree a bit with the other commenters (respectfully) and say that - it depends. First off, you said it's an algorithmic penalty, and that can really follow a wide range of timelines. Let's say you got hit by a Penguin update - you'd have to wait until the next data update, even if you do everything right, which can take months. I think "weeks" is very situational and may be optimistic.

The other big factor to consider - what does your link profile look like outside of this? If you have 1,500 toxic links from a handful of domains, and they're part of a profile with 150,000 natural links from thousands of decent-to-good domains, then definitely don't write this domain off. You've got a ton of assets to lose, and you can't just 301-redirect your way out of this (you'd have to start over). You'd also be losing social, direct traffic, and potentially a lot of other things.

On the other hand, let's say you have 1,550 links, and 1,500 of them are toxic. At this point, Google's view of your site may be so dim that, at best, you'll take weeks to get the disavow processed and then effectively be left at zero (or possibly -1). If that's the case, then I think starting over is a much different equation and possibly even faster.

It also depends a lot on the strength of your domain and your other branding efforts. Changing names isn't something to take lightly, if you've built a name. On the other hand, if you've slapped up a partial-match domain (no offense intended) and part of your problem is that you've built keyword-loaded anchor text around that PMD, then cutting the domain loose could actually help you.

This isn't a decision any of us can or should make for you in Q&A, honestly.