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There are some CMS platforms that are easier to apply proper SEO elements to, so in that regard, yes some CMSs are better for SEO. But in terms of actually improving organic visibility strictly based on the platform being used; on sites I've managed (using ASPDNSF, DNN, WP, Drupal, Magento) I've never seen any evidence of that.

That's definitely long enough for search engines (and Moz DA) to notice and react accordingly. Best of luck to you in your climb back up!

How long were the redirects down? Were there any other site changes that occurred around the time of the DA drp?

Hi Anton,

Unfortunately, the days of better rankings based on a domain name are over. If both of those domains were competing with each other, it would come down to on-page and off-page SEO factors, not the domain being used. Go with the domain that better matches your brand.

I second what Eric said.

Also, you'll want to be deliberate in choosing which one gets the canonical. Do some research on which one gets more traffic, has a higher page authority, and has good links pointing to it.

Your last idea about temporarily redirecting them would be the best way to handle this situation. 302 redirects will send the right signals to search engines, and they'll know to come back later and check on them again.

When you remove redirects, you also effectively remove any links pointing to your site that pass through those redirects. For this reason, it's not usually recommended that redirects are removed. Something I do to track which redirects are actually being hit, is adding source/medium UTMs to the resolving URL of my redirects - see example below. This pushes data into Google Analytics and allows me to see which redirects I don't need (i.e., if they don't show up in GA reports after a specified time frame), and which ones are still active.

Example of 301 redirect with source/medium UTMs:/my-old-URL >>> /my-new-URL?utm_source=/my-old-URL&utm_medium=301

That being said, if you had some high quality links passing through any of those redirects, it could certainly cause a drop in DA.