How do you move existing traffic and rankings to new domain?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Simon Cartier: I think you have to put a 301 redirect on the domain but you don`t have to keep any files, just do it at the domain provider through your portal directly. You will have to pay for the domain for a while until SEO transfers...
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  Simon Cartier: Also, all the structure of your website, links etc should be recopied on the next site, if you change the php, theme etc. to keep link juice flowing
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  Benjamin McIntyre: Thanks, but I think that will create a whole heap of 404 pages as the new website pages and structure are quite different. I`ve got about 2000 URLs from the original site/domain and setup a 301 redirect for each one to the new website page I want it to direct to. But all this is being done via the .htaccess file on the old server and I want to know if there`s another way.
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  Simon Cartier: Benjamin McIntyre Thats not how ti works, your 301 will only redirect the domain, not the links, then the link structure should be the same, like vvv.com/info, it should be that and not vvv.com/infos ... for exemple. You can copy all the links using a special plugin on Wordpress
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  Benjamin McIntyre: Okay thanks. I`ll have a try and see how it works out. Any advice on transferring existing traffic and rankings to the new domain?
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  Simon Cartier: Benjamin McIntyre Well your idea of htaccess 301 redirect could be a temporary one, until your site is all build up, then close it but leave the redirect on the domain. If all your links are identical execpt for the domain name, like /info/steph etc. Google will know that you transfered the site, then close it
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  Benjamin McIntyre: Thats my issue - all the URL slugs on the new website are different. Thats why I was setting up a 301 redirect for each page. Eg. /networking-events has now changed to just /events. We`ve combined a website that used to have 100`s of pages into a more simple website with less content pages. Navigation used to be huge. So I have 10 different event pages from the previous site redirecting to a new single event page on the new website.
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  Simon Cartier: Benjamin McIntyre Ok then just redirect to the diffrent slugs, its not "ideal" but Google algo is smart, its gonna know, first from the fact that you own both domains and second, the IP address, its better to keep the same one but if not possible, itll work anyways
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  Benjamin McIntyre: Okay cool. Thanks for your help