In 1999 I purchased what I thought was a very good domain name for a site that was about to launch. As it turned out the domain name was very inappropriate and didn't find out until well into my promotional efforts. I stuck with the original domain name and now have some very high ranking SERPs and over 250 pages of content. 15 months ago I came across a much better domain name. Long term the new domain will serve us much better as it contains our primary keywords and is very brandable. My question is, has anyone been through a domain name switch? What downside might I be experiencing in my SERPs? Also what advice would you give me on redirecting the pages to the new domain. If anybody has links to resources, I'd surely appreciate it.
You're basically going to want to do a 301 redirect from your old site to your new one. Old pages will need to redirect to your new ones and so on. Turn-around time can vary, but I'd say 1 month. You might lose some rankings for a little bit, but they'll eventually come back and be stable.