SEO technique for a second domain?

[James]

Our existing website has a poor domain for SEO. There's a nice domain available which I want to buy as I think it could do a lot more for our Google rankings.

My question is what is the best way to utilise this new domain without losing all the credentials (eg, domain age and back links, etc.) of the old domain?

And is it possible to get both domains appearing in Google's search results whilst I only maintain one actual site (ie, have one domain redirecting to the other, or including the other?)?

Not sure what techniques are available (or what they're called) so am struggling to find info.

Many thanks in advance!

[Josh]

I'm not sure what you mean by poor domain for SEO because Google have stated that they no longer take into account exact match domains. Calling yourself dog-food.com doesn't make a difference in your ranking for dog food any more. If it's a usability issue, for example your domain is 2lfh9jen.org.uk/index.php then yeah you might want to change it to something more memorable.

You can buy a second domain and use your existing link equity and domain authority of domain 1 to increase domain 2's rankings. This can be done by 301 redirecting domain 1 to domain 2, but domain 1 will drop out of the SERPs next time Google crawls it.

Alternatively you can send links from domain 1 to domain 2. You should be careful with this though as any sitewide links will look dodgy and more than one or two links on a page the rest will be ignored.

You could maintain domain 1 and the link equity passed from it to domain 2 will increase which could keep it high in the SERPs, however it's more likely it will fall as competitors will be building better links and more of them and will overtake domain 2. To keep both domains in the SERPs, both domains need to be SEO'd with decent content and tech strategies.

If you want to find out more, look up "exact match domains", "domain redirection" and "multiple domain SEO".