Starting Over with a new site - Do's and Don'ts?

[DarrenX]

After six months, we've decided to start over with a new website.  Here's what I'm thinking. Please offer any constructive Do's or Don'ts if you see that I'm about to make a mistake.

Our original site,(call it   mysite.com ) we have come to the conclusion, is never going to make a come back on Google. It seems to us a better investment to start over, then to to simply keep hoping. Quite honestly, we're freakin' tired of trying to fix this. We don't want to screw with it any more. We are creative people, and would much rather be building a new race car rather than trying to overhaul the  engine in the old one.

We have the matching .net domain, mysite.net, which has been aged about 6 years with some fairly general content on a single page.  There are zero links to mysite.net, and it was really only used by us for FTP traffic -- nothing in the SERPS for mysite.net.

Mysite.NET will be a complete redesign.  All content and images will be totally redone. Content will be new, excellent writing, unique, and targeted. Although the subject matter will be similar to mysite.COM, the content, descriptions, keywords, images -- all will be brand spankin' new.

We will have a clean slate to begin the long painful link building process.We will put in the time, and bite the bullet until mysite.NET rules Google once again.

We'll change the URL in all of our Adwords campaigns mysite.net.

My questions are:

1. Mysite.com still gets some ok traffic from Bing. Can I leave mysite.com substantially intact, or does it need to go?

2. If I have "bad links" pointing to mysite.com/123.html   what would happen if I 301 that page to mysite.NET/abc.html  ?    Does the "bad link juice" get passed on to the clean site?  It would be a better experience for users who know our URL if they could be redirected to the new site.

3. Should we put Mysite.net on a different server in a different clean IP block?  Or doesn't matter? We're willing to spend for the new server if it would help

4. What have I forgotten?

Cheers, all

[DarrenX]

1. Penguin is the problem.  Have never received any notices from Google, but the drop corresponds exactly to the date.

2.  Ok I hear you. I'll 301 it to a competitors site   (it's a joke!)

3. Good point.

[EGOL]

1. Mysite.com still gets some ok traffic from Bing. Can I leave mysite.com substantially intact, or does it need to go?

Have you determined if your Google problem is Penguin, Panda or something else?  You can get a quick diagnosis here.

2. If I have "bad links" pointing to mysite.com/123.html   what would happen if I 301 that page to mysite.NET/abc.html  ?

BAM!

3. Should we put Mysite.net on a different server in a different clean IP block?  Or doesn't matter? We're willing to spend for the new server if it would help.

It probably doesn't matter, but if you want to distance yourself from problems the new hosting might be a good idea.  I would do it.

4. What have I forgotten?

The problem could be what you have NOT forgotten.....

....We will have a clean slate to begin the long painful link building process.

I see a very dangerous word.....  "building".   If that is your mentality you can get into penguin problems.   I would replace that with "earning" and have every link something that was editorially given by people who thought that your site was awesome!