url Changes - Is it Worth It?

Short Term Hinderance vs Long Term Gain

[Gambrinus]

I use Mambo for my CMS, I'm very happy with it but for the url headings it gives a numbered system such as www.site.com/content/view/1/2 which says nothing about content and hinders search engine ranking, I'm sure.

There is code available, cheap, to automatically change urls to a more meaningful string like www.site.com/Section/Category/Article Title

However. Our rankings in Yahoo and Google are already very good for keywords and content.

This change will most likely kill any links that people attempt from search engines. And will we drop in rankings for a while? What about PR during the change-over? And the great unknown for me is how long is the "short" term?

But over the long term it may vastly improve Google's indexing of our site.

A dilemma. I'm hoping some of you may have some insight to help me make a decision here.

Cheers