Bulk 301 redirect to put 'blog' in url before every post

[thejoel]

Hey guys,

So I see that lots of sites put 'blog' in the URL before every post.

E.g. mysite.com/blog/sample-post

However, when I set up my site a few years back I did it like this:

mysite.com/sample-post

Is it worth doing a bulk 301 redirect for every post, or should I just leave it as-is?

 

[Ryuzaki]

This is a very bad idea if your site is already getting traffic and you don't want any disruptions to your traffic.

You have NOTHING to gain by adding /blog/ in regards to SEO but a big chance of screwing things up and having a slow recovery.

I can understand doing it if you're restructuring your whole site and want /blog/, /reviews/, /articles/, or whatever. Even then it's risky.

But to do this just because you've seen other sites do it is a bad idea. They probably have had it that way since their sites were created. And I can promise it provided them zero SEO benefit and zero benefit to their users.

This is what I call a "vanity change" and one that shouldn't be done to established websites.

 

[thejoel]

Thanks mate - really appreciate the advice - will defo leave the blog posts as they are.

Does the same apply to categories? I really want to restructure my categories and their slugs to make my site more topically relevant.

This won't effect any of the individual post URLs as I don't include the category in the post slugs.

But just wondering if changing the category slugs will have a negative SEO impact?

 

[Zyzz]

You may experience some rankings drop but it would return to normal asap if the permanent redirects and canonical are on point.