Changing categorisation effect on SEO

[BeckyKey]

Hi

I work on an ecommerce shop & we've discussed changing some of out categories.

We have one named cupboards & lockers, but want to split this out, so we have Cupboards then Lockers so customers can browse through our main navigation like this.

For SEO I know initially our rankings will be affected, but long term moving categories up a level will be an improvement & will be more relevant - has anyone does this before and could provide any advice?

Becky

[TheSymmetran]

I would look at the bottom line, which one do you sell more? Which one makes more profit on average per months worth of sales? Whichever one that is, use the old category URL for it and 301 redirect to the new URL for the more profitable URL. Then for a temporary period, keep a banner or a little link or something like that on the new URL that clearly directs users who are looking for the less profittable product's new URL to the right location.

That's the best I can think of. I had done this on a car rental company where they lost some of their cars and had to take down the URLs but we instead 301 redirected to the next closest choice and made some changes to "feature" the other related cars as well.

[BeckyKey]

Thanks for the reply.

I can definitely do this, they're both important, which is why we want to split them. In terms of SEO I also think having defined categories and moving them higher up in the site structure is worth doing - I just have no stats to prove this as it hasn't been done before

Thanks!

[TheSymmetran]

Sometimes, you just gotta try.