Site updating, Revamp, things to watch for?

[ccollins]

Hi,

I am currently operating a small ecommerce site where we show up well in Google and Yahoo, first page in most case searches for our particular product.

My site is kind of outdated and I am working on updating it (fairly significant updating)...

My question is, if I change the links within the site to new product pages will that adversely affect anything?

example:
"b_w_25.html" replaced by "blue_widget_25.html"

I have about 60 products, looking to change each one to a new page. Does the name of the link itself help? Like in the example above, does "b_w" hurt as opposed to actually spelling it out "blue_widget".

Thanks for any help you could provide. I mainly don't want to screw up what we have by making changes which I think are positive and productive, but not really sure.

[mrMister]

"b_w_25.html" replaced by "blue_widget_25.html"

If you do this, make sure you put a 301 redirect on "b_w_25.html" that points to "blue_widget_25.html" to show Google (and anyone who may have bookmarked the page) that the location has changed.

You will probably notice a drop in the SERPS soon after you make the changes, but wait a month and you'll be back stronger than ever!