moving products and changing category names

Hey there

I'm thinking of overhauling my categories slightly, as they have become a bit cumbersome over time and I think I could do with a few sub-sub categories so that there aren't 100s of products on one page.

My question is, if I start moving products from one category to another, changing the odd category name and adding a couple of sub categories where needed will this bugger up my rankings on search engines.

For instance if someone types in leprechaun hat into google and one of the first options is the product page on my site for my leprechaun hat, if I was to move this product (keeping the same product number etc) into a different category would it be detrimental until google bothered to index my site again? Or does the url automatically get updated or what?

how does it work?

I should point out that I have a URL SEO mod installed which gives me nice urls, I don't know if that makes any difference?

Without a link we don't know how your URL structure.

Short answer yes, shopping carts are dynamic URLs unless you have complicated SEO URL I would assume your SEO mod doesn't completely rewrite the URL into a static URL even though it might looks static, that is especially true for Simple SEO.

If you had Zen Cart original URLs I don't think you would have problem because the URL is based on the product_id and not the cPath.

It takes Google up to 2 month to un-index and re-index links for a website.

If you are getting organic traffic don't bother with changing structure. Learn from your mistakes and move on, next website you would consider more categories for easier navigation.

hey there, thanks for the info

My site is @ http://www.traditionalirishgifts.com

The seo url mod I use as far as I know it doesn't make it static, it's Magic SeoUrls.

so is it best to just stick with what I've got?

thanks

Changing the category would change the URL, so I suggest stick with what you have if you get organic traffic.