Domain rebrand dilemma - please advise

[Unknown_Man]

Hello friends, I have a bit of a dilemma - any advice you can provide is extremely appreciated! Here it is:

So I've got 2 domains, let's call it olddomain.com and newdomain.com.

Currently my site sits on olddomain.com, but the old domain no longer fits the rest of the brand (we've deviated quite a bit) so I'm looking to potentially rebrand (301 redirect) to newdomain.com within the next 6 months or so.

I've got 2 questions:

1. Since I'm still using olddomain.com, and not quite ready to 301 to newdomain.com, can I simply forward newdomain.com to olddomain.com in the meantime? Or at least point newdomain.com to the same IP as olddomain.com? Until I'm ready to 301 redirect olddomain to newdomain. Because currently if you visit newdomain.com, it just leads to a dead page and it looks a bit unprofessional.

2. When doing outreach and building links, does it make sense to continue to use olddomain or should I ask bloggers to point to newdomain (since that will be the new domain in 6 months or so)?

Some background: our site is quite established with nearly a million users a month.

Many thanks for all your help!

John

[tangor]

@Unknown_Man .... Welcome to Webmasterworld ...

Keep things separate, else you are likely to confuse the SE's in the end with duplicate content issues since your "301" is not actually being used as a REDIRECT PERMANENT....

Also consider that "old site" does not actually match "new site" in the future.

Link juice does not last forever.

Make the change. Keep both. Or move to the New.

[SEOMastermind52]

It is a good idea to start building links for your new domain while you are transitioning as well. I agree with Tangor, keep them separate till you migrate or build a new website. Once you have officially migrated you will have built some foundational links to your new domain while it was just idling. That will be strong because search engines give benefit to new web designs and content creation to begin with and then add your foundational links and you are ahead of the game.

Just be aware, do not spam your new domain with keyword anchor text links while it is idle and even when it has a live site on it (always perform a combo of links being created, at least to your home page). My suggestion is to only build naked URL links, https://example.com or https://www.example.com. Maybe do some "click here" "learn more" links to help build your trust value and DR rating. Then once you have a website on that domain your link juice from previous domain will be added (doesn't last forever as Tangor spoke on), plus benefit of new site and content, plus your foundational links. Then you can begin targeting keywords with new links.

Hope this helps some.
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[edited by: engine at 4:29 pm (utc) on Feb 1, 2021]
[edit reason] No sig links, thanks, see WebmasterWorld TOS [/edit]

[bhartzer]

I would definitely keep things separate, and minimize any redirects that are unnecessary. If you redirect, then undo a redirect, that's worse than just doing the one migration.

What's actually really important right now is that you start using the new domain. Get new content on it. Let it get crawled and indexed. Put content on it, on the same topic. The new domain may not rank, but if it has content on it then it can get crawled, indexed, and you can get links pointing to it.

Then when you're ready to move from the old domain to the new domain, Google already knows about the new domain, it's crawled and indexed, and you are less likely to issues. Also, if there are issues with the new domain (such as it was used before and has a manual action or other issue), then you'll know about that issue via Google Search Console if you put content on it right away and verify in GSC.