HubPages, Squidoo and subdomains
-
Just want to check my thinking on something. So, Google says subdomains stand on their own right? They don't get juice from the root domain. If this is true, the subdomains on a site like HubPages or WordPress.com are essentially a PR0 domain, right? Something like, mysub.hubpages.com.
But if you posted an article on Squidoo, a site that doesn't use subdomains, you should get some juice from the root domain passed to your post, right?
I usually go the guest blogging route, but I recently read a couple of posts on Web 2.0 link wheels swearing they are awesome, but most of the time the recommendation is to build it using what I perceive to be PR0 sites - Wordpress.com, Tumblr, HubPages subdomains. You would have to develop those sites so they have PR in order to pass juice.
Am I off base here or does building a link wheel in this way seem like a waste of time?
-
Why do people jaywalk in a busy intersection?
They want to get somewhere faster & are willing to take the risk of getting hit by a car because it "could never happen to them"
OR
They just don't know better, SEO is sort of this weird tiny little niche market that is not understood very well and to make matters worse, it changes every month...
I have had good friends who are very smart but had to have long arguments with them on SEO, They love giving me text links, but to my name only "because linking to my NAME" is the best thing. I have to explaine to them over and over again that a text link that describes my product "boudoir photography" "pin up photography" is much better...So they go the extra mile and spend oodles of time and make me a super pretty graphic and link to me from a banner...
Same with PR0 linking essays & blog posts, they just don't know any better.
(what was a GREAT solution 5 years ago is now hurting rankings)
The funny thing about SEO in general is older sites still have higher rankings, so the OLD SEO advice in many cases is still at the top of SERPS. So every day people who are just learning read for days on how good linking from squidoo pages are...when in the past year it has taken a huge hit, same as paid blogs.... SEO is actually very harmful to the current relevant education of SEO....
-
Thanks, Cyrus. This answers my question perfectly.
-
Hi John,
I'd say your basic assumption is correct. A subdomain on Wordpress.com, or any other 2.0 site, without any extra external links, is basically the same as starting a site from scratch on your own domain.
Blackhats once, and still do, like to use so-called 2.0 sites because
- they can build them up in bulk
- they can create a lot of accounts anonymously
- they can burn them easily when they are done.
Even then, they still must throw a ton of auto-generated, low quality links at these subdomains to get them to rank for anything. It's a common practice today, despite all the hard work involved. It's been going on for years, and I suppose some people still see it as "easy" - I view it as nothing but.
Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!
-
Thanks for the reply. Maybe I didn't ask the question properly. I'm aware of Panda and its implications. I don't build link wheels. I'm trying to understand the rationale. So, I read a couple (recent) articles where folks were swearing by Web 2.0 sites for link building. So my question is really about the whole premise of using a site like HubPages as a source for backlinks.
If a subdomain that you just created on a site like that has PR0, what is the point? Why do so many people use those sites for backlinks, whether they are building a link wheel or not?
Hopefully that is more clear. I'm wondering if I'm missing something because I do not see the big advantage to doing that.
-
Panda has changed SEO.
http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-to-use-my-time-make-my-site-bigger-or-make-link-wheels
Link wheels in 2009 might have worked but no longer.
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
-
No Control Over Subdomains - What Will the Effect Be?
Hello all, I work for a university and I my small team is responsible for the digital marketing, website, etc. We recently had a big initiative on SEO and generating traffic to our website. The issue I am having is that my department only "owns" the www subdomain. There are lots of other subdomains out there. For example, a specific department can have its own subdomain at department.domain.com and students can have their own webpage at students.domain.com, etc. I know the possibilities of domain cannibilization, but has any one run into long term problems with a similar situation or had success in altering the views of a large organization? If I do get the opportunity to help some of these other domains, what is best to help our overall domain authority? Should the focus be on removing similar content to the www subdomain or cleaning up errors? Some of these subdomains have hundreds of 4XX errors.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jeff_Bender0 -
Backlinks to less important subdomain
We have two subdomains on our site: blogs and *www. Our most important and competitive pages are on the www subdomain. I have some pages on the blogs subdomain that have valuable backlinks. Would it be helpful to our SEO efforts for the www subdomain to move and redirect those pages on the blogs subdomain to the www subdomain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RCF0 -
Changing URL to a subdomain?
Hi there, I had a website www.footballshirtcollective.com that has been live since July. It contains both content and eCommerce. I am now separating out the content so that; 1. The master domain is www.footballshirtcollective.com (content) pointing to a new site 2. Subdomain is store.footballshirtcollective.com (ecommerce) - pointing to the existing site. What do you advise I can do to minimise the impact on my search? Many thanks Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mjmaxwell0 -
Ranking with subdomain - Urgent
Does anyone have any experience if it is possible to get a website ranking on a subdomain? I'm trying out a business idea and need to keep costs to an absolute minimum. I have a site which I designed in wix.com they give a free subdomain and I want to know if there's any chance of getting it to rank Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Why does Moz recommend subdomains for language-specific websites?
In Moz's domain recommendations, they recommend subdirectories instead of subdomains (which agrees with my experience), but make an exception for language-specific websites: Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link-worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exceptions to this are language-specific websites. (i.e., en.example.com for the English version of the website). Why are language-specific websites excepted from this advice? Why are subdomains preferable for language-specific websites? Google's advice says subdirectories are fine for language-specific websites, and GSC allows geographic settings at the subdirectory level (which may or may not even be needed, since language-specific sites may not be geographic-specific), so I'm unsure why Moz would suggest using subdirectories in this case.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdamThompson0 -
How can I get Bing to index my subdomain correctly?
Hi guys, My website exists on a subdomain (i.e. https://website.subdomain.com) and is being indexed correctly on all search engines except Bing and Duck Duck Go, which list 'https://www.website.subdomain.com'. Unfortunately my subdomain isn't configured for www (the domain is out of my control), so searchers are seeing a server error when clicking on my homepage in the SERPs. I have verified the site successfully in Bing Webmaster Tools, but it still shows up incorrectly. Does anyone have any advice on how I could fix this issue? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cos20300 -
Subdomains vs. Subfolders vs. New Site
Hello geniuses!!! Here's my Friday puzzle: We have a plastic surgery client who already has a website that's performing fairly well and is driving in leads. She is going to be offering a highly specialized skincare program for cancer patients, and wants a new logo, new website and new promo materials all for this new skincare program. So here's the thing - my gut reaction says NO NEW WEBSITE! NO SUBDOMAIN! because of everything I've read about moving things on and off subdomains, etc (I just studied this: http://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday). And, why wouldn't we want to use the authority of her current site, right? While she doesn't necessarily have a high authority domain - we're not talking WebMD, here - she does have some authority that we've built over time. But, because this is a pretty separate product from her general plastic surgery practice, what would you guys do? Since we'll be creating a logo and skincare "look and feel" for this product, and there will likely be a lot of information involved with it, I don't think we'll be able to just create one page. Is it smart to: a) build a separate site in a subfolder of her current site? (plasticsurgerypractice.com/skincare) b) build a subdomain? (skincare.plasticsurgerypractice.com) c) build her a new site (plasticsurgeryskincare.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RachelEm0 -
Block an entire subdomain with robots.txt?
Is it possible to block an entire subdomain with robots.txt? I write for a blog that has their root domain as well as a subdomain pointing to the exact same IP. Getting rid of the option is not an option so I'd like to explore other options to avoid duplicate content. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kylesuss12