1500 Domains... Where to begin? & Web Structure Question.
-
So, as the title says, I am stuck. I recently have been brought on as the SEO guru for a small-mid size company with the task of rebuilding their web presence. Their website is in pretty unfortunate condition. The more research I do, the farther and farther I am going down the rabbit hole of chaos.
Essential the previous CEO was doing all SEO work. He purchased 1500 domains, all keyword specific. Installed wordpress on roughly 1,000 and then began pumping out content. Of the 1,000 roughly 300 of them have about 600-2,000 characters worth of content that is absolute fluff. From there the linking began.
Now the content is different enough that Google doesn't seem to notice that its the SAME FREEKIN THING on each domain, but I am very concerned. The company has their main multi-page domain which has other links and sources of traffic, but in essence the previous owner created a micro link web.
My advice is to cut those links ASAP and remove the previous work. At the same time, I also don't want them to lose rank. So I guess I am asking a whole slew of questions...
- Am I right in thinking that we have to build a bridge before we burn a bridge?
- Is it worth fixing up some of those other domains to have original content to try and bolster what we already have?
- Would it be better to combine everything into one website, or try and have different domains represent different things. For example Envato.com is an umbrella website with 8 separate websites operating under the same roof using different domains.?
- Where do I begin? I feel like I have started this project numerous times. I know the keywords, I know where the duplicate content is, I know the structure of the main domain, I am getting the structure of the entire link web.
Lastly, any thoughts you all have would be greatly appreciated. I realistically have minimal experience in this realm. I am a a major nub. I understand SEO in theory, sorta. So I'm getting there!
-
UPDATE
I was just informed by the agency that we are working with that two pages on our website have been compromised.
- Index.php
- Hello.php
Does anybody have any recommendations for malicious code identification software? Has anybody used the Browseo cloak identification tool? What is everybody's go-to tool for this sort of thing?
-
Nice Work!
-
We have teamed up with a local agency in Los Angeles who will be assisting us with a redesign. They are also going to look through our SEO and assist, if possible, with that. I am currently working with the studio, our treatment team, and myself to come up with a website architecture that is user friendly and effective.
As far as what has been done with the link structure. I was able to narrow down the 1000 domain list to roughly 200 that actually had content and were actually linking to us. I changed the nameservers on all of them which should not only speed up the private server we are hosting on, but also lower the number of domains on our CBlock.
I have spoken with a few members from this forum offline who I will not name unless they give me approval to give them credit.
Thanks Everybody!
-
Thank you both! You are both SEOmnipotent. See what I did there?
I might pinch that
With the links, something else you will probably need to do, is perform a disavow of the ones you don't want to be associated with. Google would eventually get round to them all, but i'll bet that with a bit of digging, you won't just find the links from the network the only issues.
And thank you Egol
-Andy
-
HA! Yea, I think that sorta answered my question.
-
I think you need that consultant.
-
Thank you both! You are both SEOmnipotent. See what I did there?
Anyway, that's actually, kinda nice... One of the methods I have been doing is looking at the Open Web Explorer.
So we have 145 Root Links, 2,296 total links a DA of 35 which I know is nothing great. At our best we have a link from psychologytoday.com with a DA of 90, and at the other end a bunch of links from plenty of our random websites with a DA of around 20. I have been going through each domain trying to determine where the "hives" are and which ones are just the outliers. Am I on the right track here?
-
Good info from Andy.
Trying to combine the 'fluff' content of 1000 sites into a primary domain could seal your fate. I would advise heavily against doing this.
Yes. If you are going to recycle anything be sure that it is not duplicate content from anywhere else.
I would guess you need to look to start a structured takedown of the network, but you must handle this carefully.
Yes, I would be using a hatchet more than a hammer on this job. But, careful study before starting.
-
Egol has pretty much hit the nail on the head.
You have a big old mess there and you don't want to end up doing more damage than good - it is easily done!
Now the content is different enough that Google doesn't seem to notice that its the SAME FREEKIN THING on each domain, but I am very concerned. The company has their main multi-page domain which has other links and sources of traffic, but in essence the previous owner created a micro link web.
That there is a big problem - link networks, as that is what this basically is, are a huge headache and I can only assume it is because it is poor quality, that Google hasn't found it yet. However, they probably will at some point so you want to back out of that as soon as possible.
Am I right in thinking that we have to build a bridge before we burn a bridge?
Yes... And no. If you get this bit wrong and suddenly Google becomes aware of what is going on in the background, you will bring them down on you quicker than you can take the sites offline. I am guessing that 99.9% of these sites have no reason to be there? If that is the case, I would be looking at a structured takedown / decommission.
Is it worth fixing up some of those other domains to have original content to try and bolster what we already have?
Probably not. If the content is how you describe it, Google has probably already made their mind up about the site and trying to fix a site of poor quality, can sometimes be an uphill battle because you are starting at a negative score. That said, it is difficult to advise exactly on this. You want to get out of this whole link network though.
Would it be better to combine everything into one website, or try and have different domains represent different things. For example Envato.com is an umbrella website with 8 separate websites operating under the same roof using different domains.?
Trying to combine the 'fluff' content of 1000 sites into a primary domain could seal your fate. I would advise heavily against doing this. Perhaps there are some sites with decent content on them that could be used to make up a blog post, but you would have to be careful about checking to see if was indexed before placing it elsewhere.
Where do I begin? I feel like I have started this project numerous times. I know the keywords, I know where the duplicate content is, I know the structure of the main domain, I am getting the structure of the entire link web.
I wouldn't want to advise incorrectly on this, but I would guess you need to look to start a structured takedown of the network, but you must handle this carefully. Either that or distancing the main site by removing links from the network to the primary domain.
I hope this helps a little.
-Andy
-
Yeah, thank you! That was sorta where my head was going as well. Thanks again!
-
If I was in your situation, I would prepare a one- or two-page document that explains how there are hundreds of spam domains in the wild that contain links and garbage that could damage the company reputation and rankings.
The goal of this document would be to justify funds to hire an experienced consultant who can advise you on how to fix this problem and create a plan for developing the company's web assets going forward.
There is nothing wrong with an in-house SEO getting appraisals or consultations from experts or just second opinions from colleagues. I do this all of the time - at least a few times a month before I make moves or decisions. It is not a confession that you are a noob or that you need assistance to do your job. I get consulting to run my sites better. It pays.
From what you have described, the size of this problem is enormous and probably too complex to get good well-considered advice for free from a forum. It will probably get more complex after you start digging.
I am not recommending paid advice because I am looking for work. I don't do paid consultations for anyone and this job is too big to understand in the amount of time spent on a forum question. You don't want poorly considered advice. That usually costs a lot more in repairs than good advice costs from the start.
There are plenty of people who post here who are qualified to help you. I suggest searching the Q&A for problems similar to this, see who replied, who was helpful, who got lots of thumbs up for relevant questions and who has a style that you like. Don't rush to hire. Be careful. Do some research.
Good luck.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate Content for Default Document Domains
I've noticed recently that within the Moz Crawl Report I keep seeing duplicate content for one of our pages that pulls from a default document. The pages are product pages, one ending in releases/ and the other ending in releases/index and are both identical pages. Normally in these situations I would prefer to make sure that every link is being sent to the releases/ page, however according to Moz, the releases/index page is actually ranking better and has a higher internal link count. Can someone advise me on the best way to deal with this situation? Hopefully I've explained myself well enough! Thanks Sam
Moz Pro | | BlueLinkERP0 -
OK Crawl Test Link Question Again!
I've downloaded a crawl test and column G Link Count reads 62 and yep there are a total of 62 links on the page in question. Column AM Internal Links reads 303 and yep there are somewhere in the order of 303 pages pointing at this one. Root Domains is surprisingly low at 6, so maybe there are only 6 domains linking to this page. BUT... External Links read 51. There are not 51 links pointing away from this domain on this page, no way hozay, so can anybody tell me what is meant by 'External Links? A humble thank you in anticipation of an education. Jem
Moz Pro | | JemRobinson0 -
Domain Authority
Has anyone ever experienced a domain authority of 1, 0 links for web 2.0 websites like tumblr, wordpress, weebly, etc? I know it's normal to see a page authority of 1 if there are no links to a url or if opensite explorer hasn't been updated. Is this some kind of bug with opensite explorer?
Moz Pro | | theanglemedia0 -
Freaked out over domain authority ranking drop.
Should I be freaked out that website's domain authority dropped 4 points? Is it normal for websites to fluctuate a couple of points or have I really screwed something up?
Moz Pro | | bewoldt0 -
Two different Domain Authorities for one site?
The "Domain Authority" of my site on the "Link Analysis" section of SEOmoz Pro (34) is different to what it is on Open Site Explorer (36) - how can this be? All I can think is that one hasn't been updated yet (I'm hoping the lower one!). Elucidation gratefully received! Alex
Moz Pro | | reddogmusic0 -
What tools/software provide the most comprehensive list of backlinks to your domain?
We're currently looking for a product that has the capability of providing a comprehensive list of backlinks pointing to our domain, which currently has 400+ URLs. We've tried SEOMoz Pro, Google Webmaster Tools, and Majestic SEO. Does anyone have any recommendations or tips on getting the best report of backlinks?
Moz Pro | | Collegis_Education0 -
Can I get a list of all links on a given domain?
Sorry, this is actually kind of a tripartite question: I was looking at the Competitive Link Analysis on one my clients' campaigns. Sometime between June and September their total links went up by about 120,000. We have no idea where those links came from (although the numbers would indicate that they're mostly internal). Question 1: In none of the other tools can I figure out how to list these links on a domain level. Is there a way to get a list of all links for our given domain? I've been playing around with the page-by-page and even that doesn't show me everything. For example, I'm looking at OSE for their homepage and it lists 45 links for a page that it claims has 151 total. Question 2: How did it pick those 45 to display out of the 151 possible? If these are only external links, why do half of them come from one of our subdomains? Also... Question 3: If our client hasn't made any major changes recently, why has the number of internal links gone up so dramatically? Thanks.
Moz Pro | | MackenzieFogelson1 -
How are our competitors getting these inbound linking domains?
I'm currently managing SEO for my company's website, and I'm getting into link building for the first time. As part of the process, I'm using Open Site Explorer to see who's linking into our competitor sites, to get a better sense of what's available to us in our particular avenue of e-commerce. However, I'm finding that our competitors are getting inbound links from high-authority sites pretty far afield from selling jewelry - census.gov, parallels.com, warnerbros.com, and others. I try clicking through to these links, but each link starts a download of a file. I've seen .f4v, .7z, and .apk files listed as inbound links to our competitor. How is this happening? Again, I'm new to link building, so there may be a simple answer here, and if so I apologize for asking. However, this seems really strange to me, and a difficult situation to confront.
Moz Pro | | jozaksut0