Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Monica and Sheena,

Thank you for the responses.

We are working on producing new, good, quality content.

Monica, the problem is that these sites are pretty much abandoned spam sites, many of them not even in English.  Finding the actual webmaster and communicating with them is a very difficullt, if not impossible task.  In most cases, these spam links are in the form of comment spam.

We have taken over a site in which the client had unfortunately hired an SEO consultant who bought bad comment spam links.  Webmaster Tools does not show a manual penalty of any kind but clearly this was bad practice from the former "SEO" consultant.  I believe we have a good structure of the completely new website we have built for the client but I am not sure of the best way to reduce any negative fallout from the previous actions.

I've read conflicting information about submitting disavow report to Google for the comment spam links.  In some cases, I have read that it would be irrelevant since there is not a manual penalty.  I am fairly certain rankings are being negatively effected from this action and looking for the best way to neutralize the algorithmic penalty.

Not sure if this helps or not but I use GWMT "Download Latest Links" and see that the soonest Google discovered one of these links is 4/4/2013.  Most of the links were generated some time during 2012.

How do you even begin to try to reach out and have comment spam manually removed...when most of the sites that allowed the comment spam to begin with are spam sites themselves?

I did not go thru your entire list of links but I checked on BuiderDirectory.com and it costs money to be included in their directory.  How is that not the same as buying links?  Shouldn't this be a violation of Google's policy as well?

Awesome timing!  Thank you for referring me to that link. That definitely makes me a little more comfortable with my original intentions. At the end of the day, it seems that in our case, the subdomain will ultimately produce the best user experience and in the end, that is probably what I should be focused on anyway.

Although the subject of subdomains has been discussed quite often on these boards, I never found a clear answer to something I am pondering.

I am about to launch a network of 8 to 10 related sites - all sharing a the same concept, layout, etc. but each site possessing unique content.  My concept will be somewhat similar to how MLB.com (Major League Baseball) is set up.   Each of the 30 teams in the league has it's unique content as a subdomain.  My goal in the initial research was to try to find the answer to this question - **"Do the subdomains of a network contribute any increased value to the Root Domain? **

As I was trying to find the answer to my question and analyzing how MLB.com did it, I began to notice some structure that made very little sense to me and am hoping an expert can explain why they are doing it the way they are.

Let me try to illustrate:

Root Domain = http://mlb.com  (actually redirects to: http://mlb.mlb.com/index.jsp)

This root domain serves universal content that appeals to all fans of the league and also as a portal to the other subdomains from the main navigation.

SubDomain Example = http://tampabay.rays.mlb.com/index.jsp

**Already there are a couple of questions. **

1.  Why does MLB.com redirect to http://mlb.mlb.com/index.jsp ? - why the mlb subdomain?

2. - Why two subdomains for tampabay.rays.mlb.com/index.jsp.?  Why not just make the subdomain "tampabayrays", "newyorkmets", "newyorkyankees" etc.

**Here is where things get a little more complicated and confusing for me. **
From the home page, if I click on an article about the San Francisco Giants, I was half expecting to be led to content hosted from the http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb subdomain but instead the URL was:

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20121030&content_id=40129938&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb

I can understand the breakdown of this URL
YMD = Year, Month, Date
Content ID = Identifying the content
VKey = news_MLB (clicked from the "news section found from the mlb subdomain.
c_id=mlb (?)

Now, if I go to the San Francisco Giants page, I see a link to the same exact article but the URL is this:

http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20121030&content_id=40129938&vkey=news_sf&c_id=sf

It get's even stranger...when I went to the Chicago Cubs subdomain, the URL to the same exact article does not even link to the general mlb.mlb.com content, instead the URL looks like this:

http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20121030&content_id=40129938&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb

When I looked at the header from the http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com ULR, I could see the OG:URL as: http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20121030&content_id=40129938&vkey=news_sf&c_id=sf  but I did not see anything relating to rel=canonical

I am sure there is a logical answer to this as the content management for a site like MLB.COM must be a real challenge.  However, it seems that they would have some major issues with duplicate content.

So aside from MLB's complex structure...I am also still searching for the answer to my initial question which is - **"Do the subdomains of a network contribute any increased value to the Root Domain?"  For example, does http://tampabay.rays.mlb.com/index.jsp bring value to http://mlb.com?  And what if the subdomain is marketed as http://raysbaseball.com and then redirected to the subdomain?

Thanks in advance. **

James...

Thank you for the quick and easy suggestions. I guess if we at least give some signals to the new URL and he begins to see some positive movement in the SERPs, he will be more inclined to follow my initial recommendation.

My original intent was for him to consolidate all 3 domains (the two previous sites and the new one) to one.

Ultimately, I can see Google having an issue (on a high level) of essentially indexing the same business 3 times via three unique URLS.

What makes all of this even more complicated is that I lost money on the web development build and am not offering / being paid for SEO services.  I originally told him that I would be a more SEO friendly site (on a technical level) and have done that...now he wants to see the results.

I will try to explain the scenario as quickly as possible and my hope is that someone can share their opinion on how they would move forward.

I was introduced to a local business owner who said he wanted help with SEO. Upon looking at his current online marketing, I saw he had 2 current sites promoting the same local business (martial arts instruction / classes). Why he had two sites?  He said it made it easier for him to dominate in Google.  Red Flag #1.  Upon doing a quick site audit, I found a ton of problems with the existing site.  Black text on a black background, keyword stuffing in title tags, non-canonicalization, no xml sitemap, no Google analytics installed...on and on.  In addition, the site did not really have a good look to it graphically.

I told him that I recommend a fresh new site using Wordpress and that we should build the content with the focus on explaining the benefits of the classes.  He agreed and we began development of a new Wordpress site from the ground up.  We built a sitemap, wireframe, nice design, etc.  The site looks much better and we got rid of a lot of the technical problems with the site.

The problem is this:  Even though the new site is technically better based on On Page analysis, it is not showing up anywhere in the Top for localized keywords.  The site has been live for about 2 1/2 months (March 1).  I made the mistake of telling him that in a lot of cases in the past, I was able to build a new site for other clients that would rank well for localized searches based on On Page optimization alone.  This is not happening for him with the new site.

The new domain is relatively new (less than a year old) and has no links at all at this point.  I recommended that we do a 301 redirect from his existing domain to the new one but he is skeptical and I almost can't blame him.  The client is not paying me to do any SEO.  The contract was to build a new site that would be built with best SEO On Page practices (Title Tags, Header Tags, Meta Desc., XML Sitemap, canonicalization, etc.)

I hesitate to post the links to his existing site and the new one we built but I can see where that may shed some more light on the subject.  If interested in taking a look, please send me a message.

I guess the two questions are this:

1. Is it reasonable for a site to rank well for a localized non-competitive term based on A scores of on page analysis?

2. What harm or foul is there in doing a 301 redirect from the old domain to the new one and then reverting back if he decides that the move hurt his rankings more than helped?

Thanks.