[marcuslind]

Google on Matt cutts plus domain change and you will find multiple google videos on this subject. Seems like google recommend the following.

1) let google index your new domain before the transfer. Content is not important. Just add enough for google to index and see that it exists a website on that domain.

2) TEST BEFORE FULL REDIRECT! Google recommend that you start of with moving and redirecting a small part of your website to see the result. If it completely mess up your rankings then obviously you should not redirect the full domain yet.

3) remember to continue paying for your old domain and renew it every year for a while to make sure google keep passing old pagerank.

4) contact your most important link providers from example news articles and so on and ask them to update their links