Cons and pros of changing your e-commerce store domain name?

[PuzzleZoo]

We have an online toy store, the domain is old over 10 years and we have some traffic, we are considering to change our domain name. There are two reasons why. First of all, we expand our product category, before we were only a puzzle store now we sell almost any kind of toy. And at this point, our current domain, PuzzleZoo.com is not representing our capacity. We also have toyzoo.com domain registered, that is also an old domain but there has been no activity with that domain.

Our concern is, how do we avoid to lose ranking and keyword authority, are we going to start from the ground? What are the correct procedures to follow during this switch if we prefer to switch?

As an alternative scenario, if we decide to keep both and open another e-store with toyzoo domain name and continue operating PuzzleZoo.com, with same products, will taht be a duplicate issue? If it is what are the consequences? (Just to add a note here, our  PuzzleZoo is also a small brick and mortar store chain in CA and TX) ToyZoo will only be an online store. Even in this case at the eyes of Google, are we going to have a duplicate store that can potentially be penalized or PuzzleZoo being a brick and mortar store chain might help us to avoid being penalized?

Should we switch the domain and redirect PuzzleZoo to ToyZoo, should we keep them both and running separately?

We need to give a decision and I was wondering if there are any expert here that can give us a good intelligent advise on which path to go?

[ReferralCandy]

If I were you, I would consider switching to ToyZoo. Having 2 domains will require separate SEO efforts and Google will penalise you for having duplicate content on both sites. It wouldn't be worth the effort to try to make both sites "unique" in content. It would be a better idea to consolidate your SEO juice in just one domain for both your eCommerce and brick & mortar presence.

That being said, the act of changing domain name for rebranding purposes will affect your SE ranking temporarily. To minimise such effects, you would have to 1) Redirect PuzzleZoo pages to ToyZoo using 301 redirect, and 2) Use the Change of Address tool in Google Webmaster. Here's a link by Google that will help you: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83105

Hope that helps!

[SEO5Team]

To add to that response when you do the 301 redirects , please ensure you do them at the page level not just at the domain level. Each page should be redirected to it's corresponding new page on the new site. I would also suggest replicating the title tags and the content for the pages that are ranking high on the current site.

[KeriMorgret]

We have a little experience with a name and domain change recently. Ruth wrote a post about it at http://moz.com/blog/domain-migration-lessons that may also help.

[FedeEinhorn]

Keri, what do you think about this: http://moz.com/community/q/changing-domains-from-net-to-com-after-7-month-of-traffic-loss

[KeriMorgret]

I don't have enough knowledge to respond to that question, sorry.

[PuzzleZoo]

Thank you for sharing this blog post.