changing domain: Best SEO strategy

Hello all

I'm in process to change my domain name from a local domain to a dot com

old: mydomain.cl
new: mydomain.com

1) How can this affect SEO?
2) Wich is the best strattegy not to hurt my ranking?

Thanks to all!

Rodrigo

Anytime you change a domain name is will likely have significant negative impact on your SEO.

How long have you been using the first domain? How well is it indexed? Are you getting any ongoing traffic? Why did you choose to make the change?

The only method that is available to you to minimize SEO impact is to put a 301 redirect in place that redirects all incoming search engine bots (and people) to the new location automatically.

Hey
Thanks for the Reply.

The domain was changed in 2007 from faculty.cl to universitarios.cl

Universitarios.cl has been used like a year now.

85% of the traffic comes from search engines.

The reason for the change is that CL domains are from Chile and I want to give the site a more international appeal, for all Latin American countries

Regards,

Rodrigo

How was the traffic impacted the first time you did the switch?

Also, how did you handle the switch? Did you use 301 redirects?

1) There wasn't so much traffic at that time (since VBSEO with my actual domain it growed a lot)

2) I did an html page replacing all relevant php's from the site:
index.php
showforum.php
showthread.php

the html was the new site's homepage with all the links but in plan HTML