How (and whether) to rebrand my ecommerce website?

[SEOMa3]

Have an E commerce website ABC that is ranking good on SERPs. Now, the brand name is changing from ABC to XYZ. Since ABC is a brand specific domain name that had to be changed.

Initially the plan was that ABC will have to be shut down so the only plan in hand was to 301 redirect to new domain XYZ.

2 sets of keywords are targeted on ABC of which 1 set is ranking extremely well and the other is not.

Now, I have the option to keep ABC live for as long as I wish BUT the product name and images will have to be changed (I sell only 3 products).

I have already started with re-branding by sending mailers to my existing clients and updates on social media about my new brand.

Ideally I would like to rank my new website XYZ for both the set of keywords that are targeted on ABC but would also want not to loose out on my traffic that I have on ABC.

What should be the best approach here? Should I still move ahead with 301 redirecting ABC to XYZ or should I run both ABC and XYZ in parallel and start fresh SEO on XYZ?

(Yes, I shall be having unique content on XYZ if I keep both sites live.)

Please help

[jimsthoughts]

If you 301 redirect ABC to XYZ then the full "link power" of ABC will move to XYZ. That's what I'd do. It's much easier to concentrate your efforts on one site than to split it across multiple sites.

[phranque]

make sure your 301 redirects are one-to-one and not all of ABC's urls redirected to the XYZ home page.

[seoskunk]

301 redirect is the only option IMO. Recent reports suggest no loss of page rank through a 301 but its been a contentious issue here as whether any page rank is lost. Here's the latest info:

[searchengineland.com...]

[phranque]

if you listen carefully to the video matt cutts doesn't say "no loss of page rank through a 301".

The amount of PageRank that dissipates through a 301 ... is currently identical to the amount of PageRank that dissipates through a link.

[SEOMa3]

A major issue with 301 redirecting to XYZ is that I rank for brand related keywords on ABC. Over the years, my brand got a recognition and people majorly search for my products using my brand name. Hence, I would like XYZ also to rank for these brand terms as they get me a lot of traffic and also for the new brand name.

If I 301 redirect, the concerns are:
- ABC is a brand specific domain while XYZ is not. Will this affect my rankings?
- Should I be changing my title, meta keywords & description now or should that be changed later?
- I shall be making minor tweaks to my existing content to include the new brand name. Should that be done now or later.
(When I say minor tweaks, if my product name is "ABC Product 1", i shall make it "XYZ ABC Product 1" i.e. I shall not be removing my previous brand name from it.)

Also, I would like to know that if I run both sites in parallel, are there any chances that Google may penalize me for selling same products on 2 different sites (knowing the fact that I am the same merchant targeting the same audience but through 2 different websites).