Domainchange & Relaunch

[GregorHendrych]

Hi SEOMOZERS,

We are planning to do a relaunch (new content, new design) + a domainname change (because it contains a keyword). Some of my team members think it is best to do the domain change already on the old-version to see if there might be some problems. Whereas I think it would be best to implement the domainchange on the new version because otherwise it can be suspected we did the domainchange only for SEO purposes. What are you guys thinking?

Thanks

Gregor

[sferrino]

Personally I would do a clean start on the new domain, and 301 or canonical the current pages. If you have a new version why even bother seeing if there are problems with it. One thing I have noticed is that when setting up a new domain, the first time Google Indexes a page it 'seems' to keep that page longer, so the older page would remain in the index when you have a new revised page. If you just go live with the new version, block the search engines with a robot.txt, check it, test it, check it again, then remove the block and forward you could be up and running faster, in my own experience.

[GregorHendrych]

Hi Steven, thanks for your fast answer!