To clear up any uncertainty, I think there are two questions being asked:

1. Link to be disavowed: Do I disavow both the www and non-www versions of a bad link?
2. Site you own: Which site in webmaster tools do I upload the disavow list to - www or non-www?

The link to be disavowed is an easy answer because in most cases if you want a link disavowed, you probably don't want a link from that domain (because its suspect, de-indexed, etc.).  Therefore you can simply blanket it with domain:badwebsite.com. This will be sure to get any link from this site to yours, regardless of the subdomain (i.e. www.badwebsite.com, ww2.badwebsite.com, forum.badwebsite.com, etc.)

Answer #2 isn't quite as easy. The safest (and arguably proper) way is to link mine both the www and non-www versions of your website and treat each as a separate site (as Google does). Even if you are using 301 redirects or canonicals I still recommend this method. In many cases, one version will have a much smaller backlink volume. In any case, pick out the bad links and try to get them removed by emailing the website. Once the attempt has been made, Compile the remaining backlinks (still in separate lists for www and non-www), and upload them to their respective disavow tool areas.

I thought I'd come back and re-post the solution in case this shows up in SERPs or anyone other Moz members are looking for this answer (courtesy Noah Wooden of Izoox). HTACCESS:

<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On

# Strip set of opening-closing parenthesis from URL and 301 redirect.
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} [()]+
    RewriteRule ^(.)[(]+([^)])[)]+(.*)$ /$1$2$3 [R=301,L]</ifmodule>

Remember to put this in the proper 'order' on your htaccess file if you are doing any other redirecting. The code above 301 redirects URLs with parentheses into the exact same URL minus the parentheses.

thanks Merlin - Ill have their programmer try this.

Hi Merlin  - thank you.

Here is an example:

www.domain-name.com/category1/subcategory/product-name-details-(model-number)-length

needs to change to:

www.domain-name.com/category1/subcategory/product-name-details-model-number-length

Any suggestion would be great. Their programmer is having trouble creating a rule.

Thanks in advance

Im reworking a website for a client, and their current URLs have parentheses. I'd like to get rid of these, but individual 301 redirects in htaccess is not practical, since the parentheses are located in many URLs.

Does anyone know an HTACCESS rule that will simply remove URL parantheses as a 301 redirect?

This answer should be a featured blog post.

I agree with all of the above. The reality is that SEO's now get the 'mechanic' rap - you don't know what they're doing under the hood and they charge an arm and a leg.

I think first and foremost you have to look at the client portfolio, and do reference checks. Unfortunately, companies who provide these are never the cheapest (for good reason) but you get piece of mind.

Some SEO companies claim that they cant provide references for their client's privacy.  This is true in some cases, but any SEO company that has been given permission to display their client's logo should have permission to give a reference for at least 1, if not 50%.

Speak to the reference - and check the rankings they received. Its a sure fire way to know if the company you are considering is worth their salt.

A good question and one that many businesses don't ask and pay the price.  I've heard a thousand times, and almost every client we get has trust issues because they've already been burned.

Good luck!

FYI: the unique suite # was requested simply so that the address was 'unique' from google's perspective. assuming that google understands suite #'s. The mail was always forwarded to the proper business even with the duplicate suite # since this was a part of the virtual office service.

From a strict A/B standpoint where the two variables are:

www.domain.com/california

www.domain.com/state/california

You will see no discernible difference in SEO results. That being said, if you plan to expand the URLs later, i.e.

www.domain.com/state/california/santa-monica/our-service-keywords.* then you should probably consider what length they will be and factor that into your decision.

Thumbs up to Miriam who gives a lot of good advice here.  And definitely merging is the worst case scenario. Since this discussion is still going, and since it seems your client cant simply go get a real business address (and the overhead that comes with it)  Ill give a real case study as an example.

We had a client that was in a competitive niche, and provided a service (not a product). She had a virtual address, and by that I mean they paid a monthly fee to the location and as part of that fee the location would forward any inbound mail, and the client could also use meeting rooms, offices or boardrooms a certain amount of times per month. Other services were available such as phone answering etc...

When she became a client, the first thing we realized was that the client had the same suite number as all the other businesses that used the same 'virtual office' service. The clients previous SEO had already started citation work, but didnt warn them about merging or any other problems associated.

Anyway, so what we did was first request a different unique suite number from the service, which they provided at no extra cost. Then, we bought a local number and forwarded it to her home, which was a local transfer since she indeed was in that city but worked from home unless she needed to meet clients etc.

So now we had a unique local address with a unique local phone number. The last thing we had to do was simply mine for old citations and have them all changed.

This worked, and still does work, but we only did this after explaining to the client that it was not the best scenario for sustainability in local SEO. As per my first comment, at anytime Google could simply omit that address and all business that claim it as a brick and mortar address.

Best of luck !

You do lose some juice on 301's so obviously the best course is to contact sites that house the link and ask them to change it to the new URL (once the new URL is live, and you would still 301 redirect).  This isnt always easy to do particularly when there are 1000's of backlinks, so it really depends on how feasible an option that is, and how many backlinks you have (are there only 3? then having an optimized URL will probably be more beneficial than leaving the URL unoptimized, even if you cant have the links changed).

As to 'exactly' how much do you lose? I dont think anyone has a definitive answer. But I have worked with websites that 301 redirect almost every page when they migrate to a new platform and the SEO impact is not severe if done properly.

I still recommend mining your backlinks and having their targets chaged (at least for the more authoratative ones).

This is a tough one. The worst thing to do is to start with citations and then find out they arent working, and then fix the issue and start all over again (now having two NAPs floating around.

Some businesses use virtual offices in an attempt to rank in different cities or areas. If this is the case with your client, it never hurts to contact that service and explain that you must have a unique suite number. Ive found in some cases they will be quite accommodating.

As for the effects - Ive performed local optimization for clients in this scenario and it still worked fine (and the other businesses using the same virtual office also were in the maps for their keywords), but with constant changes in Local, its risky (in my opinion) to continue without getting a unique address first.

Just my 2 cents!

From a strict A/B standpoint where the two variables are:

www.domain.com/california

www.domain.com/state/california

You will see no discernible difference in SEO results. That being said, if you plan to expand the URLs later, i.e.

www.domain.com/state/california/santa-monica/our-service-keywords.* then you should probably consider what length they will be and factor that into your decision.