Changing the dir/url of High Ranked pages..

[Import Export]

A website has well ranked pages throughout the site, however needs to move many of these pages to a different/new directory.

In example "www.widgets.com/red/small/simple.php" would become "www.widgets.com/red/simple.php"

What would be concepts of the best practice to do so?

[Voyteck]

I suggest setting up permanent 301 redirects to the new page from the old one, this should nicely pass the PageRank.