Domain Change Before or After Site Revamp?

[Kingalan1]

In the last year traffic to our site has dropped in half and ranking has dropped significantly. Very little no content has been added in that time. We would now like to improve ranking by adding new content.

2 domains effectively exist for the site. The existing domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. But www.metro-manhattan.com redirects to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Our company is Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc..  We registered www.metro-manhattan.com and created the redirect to www.nyc-officespace-leader.com in 2012. www.nyc-officespace-leader.com was registered in 2006. Many links to the site show www.metro-manhattan.com and I believe this may be a source of confusion for Google.  Would it be best to make the domain consistent at this time by redirecting it once and for all and to do so before adding new content? If this is done correctly can we avoid taking a hit on ranking?

Note:

-www.nyc-officespace-leader.com is the old domain.
-www.metro-manhattan is the new domain but has existed since 2012 and has been redirecting to the old domain since then
-The company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space (similar in branding to the new domain)

Am I correct in assuming that having the 2 domains may be causing issues with Google involving domain authority? Change the domain before adding content or add content before?

[RuthBurrReedy]

The links to metro-manhattan may be losing a small amount of value as they pass through the redirects. Google has previously stated that this is not the case, but I think it's more accurate to say that it's not always the case, and I have certainly seen a measurable decrease in link value (usually around 15%) when passing through a redirect. I doubt that Google is confused about the two domains, though, since metro-manhattan has been redirecting to nyc-officespace-leader for 4 years and, unless I'm reading your question wrong, has never had content on it.

If metro-manhattan has more inbound links pointing to it than nyc-officespace-leader, AND is a better reflection of your current brand, it may indeed be worth moving the domain. I would not move the site from one domain to the other just based on the reasons you've outlined above, though. Moving your site from one domain to the other is likely to negatively impact your rankings and traffic in the short term as Google gets used to it being in the new spot. This is entirely possible to overcome through marketing the new site, but will not be a quick fix to the problems you've outlined. So if you want to move the site, and commit to marketing that site, go ahead, but don't do it just to capture link value pointing to metro-manhattan.

If you do decide to move the site, my advice is always to make a domain change separate from making other major site changes in layout, content, etc. So you would either want to:

• Move the site as-is, do some proactive link building to the new domain/reach out to people who link to the old domain to get them to update their links, get a marketing and promotion plan in place, and then once your rankings and traffic have stabilized from the move, start making improvements, or:
• Make the improvements to the site you want to make now, and revisit moving the domain after those changes have been in place for a while.

Your other option would be to reach out to sites that link to metro-manhattan and ask them to update their links to point to nyc-officespace-leader. That would allow you to get more value from those links, but I know it's not always possible to do. So like I said, unless you have additional compelling reasons to move the site beyond what you've said in your question, I would leave it where it is and focus on improving it.