Hey, I have a question. Say I have a webite, lets call it oldsite.com Oldsite.com is getting a fair amount of traffic and revenue. But now say I wanted to change domains, if I simply do a 301 redirect to redirect all pages to my new domain, will my google rankings / traffic drop at all? Thanks
Rankings will fall, at least for a while, maybe a couple of weeks. After that the rankings is likely to be similar to the former, maybe a little lower.
Why do you want to redirect your site? Old domain aged sites are better for ranking. If i were you what i would do is, get a 1 or 2 year old domain and redirect that site to my old site and get links to my new domain. But to stick to your question yes it will drop and i am not sure at all that you will still have your rankings.
I wouldn't transfer everything to the new domain name. I would keep your old domain name and just work harder on that to get it higher ranked since you are saying it is already getting a fair amount of traffic. To answer your question, you will lose rankings for that domain name but your new domain name will go up in rankings because 301 redirects pass link juice. Meaning any links that you have pointing to your old domain name, will be redirected to your new domain name.