Effect of changing directory structure on rankings?

[raindance]

Hi,
I have a client whose site I manage. She has gotten her search engine rankings to be pretty good after many years of attention to it. We are making some structural changes to the site and she wants to move a few of the high ranking pages to other directories on the server. So for example right now the page is www.site.com/directory1/page.html and she wants to move it to www.site.com/directory2/page.html

What would the effect be on her rankings? The page name would stay the same but the location of the page within her site structure would change by one directory.

Of course, users bookmarks would break. What other downside would there be?

Thanks so much in advance.
Laura

[bradbox]

All the rankings will change. All the inbound links will point to the wrong place. You should create redirects from the old place to the new place, and a very easy to navigate 404 page as well.

You can create a sitemap which allows search engines to know the new location of old content. We've never needed to use these - if the site has enough traffic, the inbound links will soon be rectified, and the search engines will switch to the new locations very quickly indeed.

Bottom line - unless the directory name really makes a difference, don't bother. The only time its unavoidable is when you change your CMS or technology provider.

[AussieWebmaster]

you do page to page 301 redirects and it will be all good