Moving sub-categories and pages

Any downsides for SEO

[shallow]

I'm using WordPress to manage my site and would like to change a subcategory, and a number of articles associated with it, to a different category that already exists at the site.

It's easy enough change the subcategory. 301 redirects will automatically be created so the value of incoming links would be retained.

Are there any downsides to doing this from a SEO (or any other) perspective?

Thank you.

[AnkitMaheshwari]

If the page level 301 redirects will be put in place correctly, their should not be any major downside with the move except for some initial ranking drop.

However, you might have ranking dip in Yahoo as IMO Yahoo do not recognize 301 redirect.

[Robert Charlton]

I'd suggest that, before the move, you check your backlinks to see if any of the pages whose urls you're changing has any external inbounds.

If they do, make a note of who's linking and see if you can get them to change the urls. This is more important when you're changing domains, I feel, as in that case it sends a signal to the engines that the change is legit. Since you're keeping the same domain, it's less important, but it can't hurt.

Use Yahoo Site Explorer to check the links. It gives a much more complete list than Google does. Registering your site with Yahoo, btw, would give you a more complete list of backlinks (inlinks, they call them) than you'd get from them otherwise.

[suresh]

There are two aspects: One is moving articles from one category to another. Second is renaming the 'sub-category'.

If you are moving articles from one to another there is no issue in wordpress CMS. But if you are renaming or change the name of any category or sub-category then generated URL will be new one. Then you will have to redirect OLD URL to new one. Because there is no auto process to be 301 redirect in wordpress CMS.