Changing Forum Categories

[melbo]

I'm thinking of making my forum categories a little more specific especially after seeing the output of the Relevant replacements. I didn't give them much thought when I created them as I used the Forum Titles to better describe the content.

Will changing the category now have any negative effect on my current SE placement?

[Michael Biddle]

Do you have the category name in your URLs?

[melbo]

No, Just forum title (Preset 1) in vBSEO cp.

[melbo]

I suppose that means it does not matter if i make some changes then.

[Brian Cummiskey]

While the category URLs will change, they are not critical and making this change will be ok to make.

[melbo]

I noticed that right before I installed vBSEO, Google had begun to add some categories to the URL in SERPs. You could click the whole URL or hit just a category. I'm not sure if this will change with my new vBSEO'd URLs or not. Have you noticed this new behavoir or is it not new and I've just noticed it?

[Brian Cummiskey]

That has been on google for a few months now. Google will update themselves with your new urls.

You can also make some custom htaccess rules.

ie, site.com/forum-cat/ is your old category

Redirect 301 /forum-cat/ http://www.site.com/forumdisplay.php?f=XXX

where XXX is the forumdisplay url ID.

These should go right above the sitemap rule in your htaccess file.