301 Redirect old domain to new domain

Hello,
Hoping i can get some advice on this please.
Two weeks ago i moved a 6 year old .co.uk website to a newly registered two week old .com domain.
The reason for the domain change was for re branding. The new domain is targeting the same niche as the old domain.
The design, content, URL structure has not changed, basically exact same website but different domain name.
The .co.uk website ranked on the first page for a variety of my money keywords.
I setup a 301 redirect via htaccess and submitted the site via the Google change of address.

How long does it normally take to rank again for the keywords?

thanks
John

Make sure you change the settings on your new tld to target UK audiences as your previous one did. You can do that from Google otherwise it will not appear in UK search results.

OK thank you for the advice i have updated the settings via Google.
Thanks
John

Once you have done this via webmaster tools (tld - .co.uk) you should expect to see results within 3 weeks max. My advise would have been to 301 all of the internal pages to your new domain and not the homepage. That is, assuming you have been hit by a google penalty, If not, don't worry.

Ok thanks again for the advice.
I have done a site wide 301 redirect from old domain to the new domain and everything is redirected correctly. When i do a site: in Google the home page and all the internal pages point back to the new domain in Google.
Is it common to get a penalty when you do a redirect from a old to new domain? The old site was ranking fine before the domain change.
Thanks
John

Hi John, In my experience you will only get the penalty passed on if the previous domain had been penalised. By the sounds of it you should be fine.

Hi,
Thank you for coming back to me i really appreciate it.
One final question if i may. I have started to see the website regain its ranking in google.co.uk for the low competition keywords which the site ranked for before but for the medium competition keywords the site is no where to be found.

I am hoping this is normal part of the 301 update process and it will just take more time to recover the positions. From your experience is this what you expect to see 3 weeks after doing a 301 redirect from the old to the new domain.
Thanks