Will changing the structure of the URL for products affect the position of the site?

Question

Search Engine Optimization

Hello, we made a website a long time ago, it occupies quite good positions in the search. Now we are reworking it, and it became necessary to change the structure of the URL.
It was like this: домен/category-1/category-1-1/product-alias
I would like to change it to this: домен/tovar/product-alias/product-idi.e. so that there is no nesting in the url of the goods. I read about 301 redirects, I understand that it will be necessary to redirect from old urls to new ones.

But here are 2 questions I have.

1. домен/tovar-I have nothing to display here, because all products are divided into categories, so I think to make a 301 redirect from домен/tovarto домен/katalog (тут выводятся все категории), so that there would not be 404 for this url -домен/tovar
   
2. And if there is no nesting in the URL, will search engines like it? Because it will not be clear from which category the goods.
   

These are the questions =) tell me please, can the position of the site fall due to such a decision? Thank you in advance for your response.

Answer 1

I will answer only based on my experience.
First, I will describe the options that I see in practice, then I will express my opinion.
Option #1: In the TOP-5 results, I see sites with a structure where the "domain/product" page returns 404.
The reason is most likely that each page of the site is promoted by its own group of queries.
Therefore, if "domain/product" is not progressing in requests, then the 404 response is not critical.
Option #2: There is a pool of internal factors (that's what we are talking about now), which include giving more weight to those pages that have nesting in the URL from pages that are lower in the hierarchy - for example, "domain/catalog//product-alias/ product-id". Therefore, "/catalog" is considered to get good weight if it returns 200OK, in this case.
The option you suggest is not recommended.
Just because if the page should give 404, then it should give it and you should not change it to 301. Take care of the quality of product cards, place internal linking blocks m / d card-sections, card-cards and you will be happy!)