moving to structured urls

[mga_ka_php]

we have a 3 year old website. i would like to overhaul the url's,

 

like making searchState.php into /state/search, i would implement that as RewriteRule ^state/search/?$ /searchState.php

or searchCity.php into /city/search,  i would implement that as RewriteRule ^city/search/?$ /searchCity.php

 

does it will affect the current ranking and all the index pages? what are your recommendations? i just talk to a seo man which said i should use Redirect 301.

 

thanks.

[cags]

As far as I'm aware the use of Redirect 301 would be for the opposite purpose of what you have. In other words you would also have in your .htaccess file a rule that would Redirect your old format URLs to your new format (obviously being careful not to form a loop). That way if somebody clicks on a link of the old format then it's redirected to the new one, before then rewriting in the background back to the old one. This essentially ensures that any links currently out there will essentially link to the same URL as new links.