Domain.com/XXX or domain.com/blog/XXX ?

[andzon]

i have a business and a side blog on the website. is it fine to turn my blog to domain.com/XXX instead of  domain.com/blog/XXX?

does it in anyway of these affect the SEO?

[eyepaq]

Hi,

URL format and length it's a ranking signal - that means shorter URLs are "more important" but only if there is a taxonomy in place. If all your URLs are directly on the root - then this doesn’t play any role. So if your domain has a lot of content and some or most is structured domain/folder/ and domain/folder/folder etc - then moving from /blog to the root will bring some signals that this content might be important.

But note that having short urls on the root directly it's not a roadmap to good rankings

On the user side - if the content is "blog related" - blogging, articles, opinions etc - then I would keep it on the /blog/ as it can influence the CTR in SERPs - that also depending on the queries of course and if it will match what users are expecting - a blog thing or some other resource ...

Hope it makes sense.

Cheers.

[ScottMcPherson]

When it comes to formatting URL's, I think it's important for the URL's to make as much sense as possible from a hierarchical stand point. Moz has a really good article on the optimal URL structure. So you can sort of think of the blog keyword as the subcategory keyword from the example in that article.

Further more, look at how both moz and Matt Cutts structure their blog URL's.

http://moz.com/blog

https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/

Hope that helps!