Changing URL without losing traffic

Going from blue-wigets.com to bluewigets.com

[herd4598]

I am trying to change from www.blue-wigets.com to www.bluewigets.com without losing my SE traffic. I will have to have them both up at the same time in order to transfer the traffic without losing sales. Since these will be mirror sites, will it hurt to have both of them on the same dedicated server with different IP addresses? If anyone has any other suggestions, please let me know.

[hp11]

I would create a 301 permanent redirect. Otherwise, you can hit with a duplicate content penalty. I myself have used 301 redirects for sites I marketed off and online. Offline, I only advertised my www.mydomain.com because it was simpler for customers. Online, I marketed my www.my-domain.com because it helped with seo.

[herd4598]

Thankyou for responding HP. I have read that 301 can cause your SE rankings to drop. I cannot afford that. I am thinking of if making bluewigets.com a completely different site. I'll let it sit around for a few months to get past the sandbox effect. And then slowly delete pages on the old website while adding the deleted pages to the new website. I will also be transferring the backlinks as I do this. What do you think?

[hp11]

I have read that 301 can cause your SE rankings to drop. I cannot afford that.

For SEO and search engine purposes, a 301 redirect is the only safe way to redirect a domain. A search engine will index only the new domain and transfer the link popularity so that your rankings won't be affected.

I am thinking of if making bluewigets.com a completely different site. I'll let it sit around for a few months to get past the sandbox effect. And then slowly delete pages on the old website while adding the deleted pages to the new website. I will also be transferring the backlinks as I do this. What do you think?

I still believe that a 301 redirect would be best suited here - especially if you are concerned with keeping traffic up, sales up and no downtime. You can always purchase another domain for your new site idea, unless of course the domain name is that good. Otherwise, you have months of waiting before you can do anything with either domain.