Two aged domains... which to use?

I have a client with two 4 year old domains. He's been using one for his site, and has backlinks built to it.... but it's a ugly name. And the rankings have dropped a bit lately. The other he uses for the company's email and has had it parked with Godaddy for 4 years. But it has a MUCH better name I think.

Also he's gonna redesign his site in a month or two with all new sub-domains, so he'll lose most of his rankings in his sub-pages anyway I think.

I can do one of two things. Keep the current domain and 301 the better named one to it and just keep on going like normal. Or I can change him over to the "un-used" 4 year aged domain that's been parked for 4 years and then just 301 his current site to it.

Site 1: Ugly name, been getting used by him for 4 years, seen some rankings drop lately.

Site 2: Good name, been parked and used for emails for 4 years.

tough to say...had you taken the good name and at least created a landing page, you could have then begun the tedious process. Doing nothing with it is a sin.

Does a parked domain for 4 years have as much "trust" as a site thats been used 4 years? The current URL has seen severe rank sliding in last month or two anyway.

I asked a similar question on here a few months back. The majority response was to run both sites simultaneously. So in your case you could put a nice new site together (or something reasonable for the moment) on the currently parked domain and see how it responds in the Google SERPS. Start doing SEO on it until it hits page / number 1. In the mean time just leave the active domain as it is until the other domain is visible in Google and you're less reliant on organic traffic for that site for business. At this point you can then 301 or delete that domain, your call.

Also, when you have something up and running on the currently parked domain but are not ranking yet you could also provide a visible link on the current domain indicating a new site is under development and "click here to see it", type thing. Hope ths helps.

It's depend on which niche you want to build your site. Try google keyword suggestion tool to look for the keyword and the domain name, than check for backlinks of that domain.

Question... any idea how much of the rankings DO transfer with a 301? I'm thinking it wouldn't be much.

Even if you do switch, I think you should keep the old domain. Don't redirect it but have a large link telling clients about the new site. The think about the current site is that it likes carries some clout. If it has an ok PR, then you'll be passing the link juice that you've collected on to your new site. It'll be like your already built web2.0

The "old" URL they're currently using is only a PR2. But the "new" one that's also 4 years old but parked is a PR n/a for whatever reason. Is this a problem?