Will adding /blog/ to my urls affect SEO rankings?

[GerardAdlum]

Following advice from an external SEO agency I removed /blog/ from our permalinks late last year. The logic was that it a) doesn't help SEO and b) reduces the character count for the slug.

Both points make sense. However, it makes segmenting blog posts from other content in Google Analytics impossible.

If I were to add /blog/ back into my URLs, and redirected the permalinks, would it harm my rankings?

Thanks!

[RossKernez]

Hi there,

I would keep a "blog" in the URL since it can get really messy in Google Analytics.

Ross

[R0bin_L0rd]

I agree with you both that "blog" in the urls is valuable in terms of segmenting Analytics data. The only thing I'd bear in mind is that changing the URL isn't actually just changing the URL. To Google - you are deleting one page and creating another, and it takes time to understand that the new page should replace the old page, even if there's a redirect in place.

Given that you've presumably already done this once and you're reversing it, the risk should be lower, but I'd still approach this change as though it's a migration. I'm not saying "don't do it" just "take precautions".

In terms of tracking in the interim - you could consider using a custom dimension to identify blog posts. Use Google Tag Manager to determine the page is a blog post then send the dimension along with the page hit. Not ideal but it's something if you find you don't have other options.

Good luck!

[Seotools78]

I had recently remove a blog from my website and the website certainly drops in ranking. The reason is that Google considers it a totally new page.