What's the best way to update URLs?

Hey Everybody:

I have some fairly popular pages on my site - and I want to change the URLs of those pages (ie. from xyz.com/abc/ to xyz.com/def/). I've heard it mentioned here that re-directs might be punished (and same with duplicate content - if I left the page in the old location as well as the new). Plus there's the whole sandbox thing...

Just wondering how you guys do it? Don't want to move the pages around (they're #1-3 in most search engines on specific terms) if it'll ruin everything.

Thanks,

Bob

 

just do 301 redirection and this is it.
There is no duplicated content, because you don't have the same content on two links.

 

Thanks zokiii!

 

Here's a good read before you do..

http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html

 

Thanks FSM:

Funny thing is. My problem is one they didn't think about before writing that article: I named the URLs almost a decade ago - before things like SEO even existed (which is one of the reasons I want to change them)! ;o)

Cheers,

Bob