Sgt_Kickaxe - 9:51 am on May 5, 2011 (gmt 0)

Some other tips, been there, done that.

- AFTER redirects are in place include BOTH the new pages AND the old pages in your sitemap. Let Google see the new but ensure they see the old and can learn about the 301's. When the old url's are out of the Google cache you can remove them from your sitemap.

- DO NOT attempt to use noindex type meta tags on old urls.

- DO NOT add the old category/folder/articles etc to your robots.txt file.

The point being you want Google to have access to everything until it sorts out your 301's. If you start blocking content your risk losing built up history for it before Google has migrated all your pages in their database. I'd also suggest not relying on Canonical but that's a personal preference.