Changing a URL structure within a site

[SEODinosaur]

Im moving a page over from www.domain.com/page to www.domain/category/page

currently www.domain.com/page is ranking in google. Would a 301 do the job? is there anything else needed to help keep SE positions?

[Tonyd23]

301 would do the job. Remember to change all of the internal linking on your site & if possible any controlable external links.

[NakulGoyal]

Will the only URLs still work ? Like for example we had something like: www.domain.com/blah-blah/categoryname-categoryid.html and we changed to www.domain.com/better-stuff/categoryname-categoryid.html, we did the canonical tag and that worked like a charm. Just FYI. In your case it sounds like 301 would do the job right. Is it WordPress by any chance ?

[SEODinosaur]

Yes it is a WP site. Im reading many opinions on this. I want to move a ranking page 2 levels deeper in the URL structure, does the depth of the page matter at all?

is this www.domain/category/page better than this www.domain/category/sub-catagory/page for ranking?

I am restructuring an entire site there will be a few pages taken out and a few 301s. Many of the pages have the .html extension (plug-in). I read that its better not to have the .html if we take it out do we need a 301 redirect? can taking the .html out hurt SERP results?