I am thinking of changing my domain name within my present WordPress website, is this a straightforward task, especially as to regard back links etc? Any help would be appreciated, thanking you.
First of all its not good to change a domain name after you have got rank in search engines but as you have decided then what you can do is. Buy a new domain and get your site hosted and redirect all your indexed and other pages to your new url. That way you will not loose your ranking !
and do no let your old domain. It will be wiser to forward the traffic to your new one.I've one case that someone pay me $1500 for his old domain that deleted in in the past and I hand reg it by change.
If you change your domain name then you would loose your ranking in search engines, this is the main thing so why are you going to change your domain name?