For the past year I have been working on a website online and offline. I would take the website down for weeks or months and work on it locally instead. Now that I am fully ready to launch it, is it better to continue with my existing domain or is it better to purchase a new domain?
The content on the website has already been partially indexed by Google so would Google punish my SEO ranking if I continue to use the same domain?
You do not say how long you have had your existing domain for. I assume not terribly long based upon the question.
You also do not give anyother reason for wanting to abandon the existing domain for another such as a better sounding or descriptive name. I assume this is not the case.
I am assuming the only issue is that a site has not been on that domain name for a while. You do not say how long.
I am also assuming this period is less than one year being measured in months, more than a few.
If all of this is true and there are no other factors, there is no reason to change domain names unless you want to. The fact that a site has come and gone periodically is relatively normal. The site when deployed will be indexed again and any previous indexing dropped. Any domain that has existed for a period has already begun building it's trust metrics. Even a site of just 1 year will score higher than one just registered.
There is no reason to change domain names unless you want to. If that is the case, then perhaps this is the time, before too much is invested.
You can use you current website, if their is less chance of downtime in future. Heavy downtime may cause, your ranking drop down. Also visitor hate if website is slow and not working properly.
Make sure following point.
Keep your website fast load
Less downtime ratio
Fast server response time
Location near to you targeted country.
Hope this will help
Try to search your site with Site: , if you get results, you are still in Google Index.
If your website was down for a short period, Google will simply drop you a message in search console letting you know that crawler are unable to access it. Short downtime will not hurt your indexing or ranking.
Read this advise by Matt Cutts: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2281151/matt-cutts-short-website-downtime-wont-hurt-your-search-rankings
Or watch this video: If my site goes down for a day, does that affect my rankings? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eYJuT0yGrI
But as far as your domain was not involved in spamming, you can continue to use it. Once the googlebot start finding it, they will continue to index the website.
