Moving from a Penalized Domain

[triggerfinger]

All,

One of my clients domains has been heavily penalized, the effect of hiring a shady SEO firm.

I've advised that they abandon the old domain (no intrinsic value to it that I can see) and start fresh with a new domain.

The question I have is whether moving similar/equivalent content to a new domain would risk the penalty re-emerging onto the new domain.

As it was never the current content that was suspect, but rather link building tactics (and perhaps old on-page spammy stuff) that caused the domain to be penalized, I would assume that a new domain would be a clean start. However, I'd like to be certain before I give my advice.

Does anyone have similar experiences that they could share?

Thanks so much.

[tedster]

We've had lots of reports here of success in this kind of domain move. And you're right, the content itself is not usually the reason for a heavy penalty, it's much more often about backlinks and deceptive redirects - things that would not migrate to a new domain.

[Maurice]

no i have had move to a new domain for a client at my previous job. A site that got penalised for being hack'd and having 1,000's of #*$! links added.

It took around 2/3 months for rankings to come back and penaty didnt follow over.

[triggerfinger]

Thanks so much guys, I appreciate it.