It definitely will.

Yes the 301 will solve it but not necessarily any quicker than the robots.txt update. It will still be indexed until Google crawls it again, which doesn't really matter too terribly (especially if you're redirecting)

Chances are your site won't populate for any high-volume keywords since it's new... And it would be de-indexed eventually if you blocked it from the robots. In any case, all of these options will work and you should be fine.

Good luck!

That would be a good way to do it. The other way would be to block it in the robots.txt file on the root directory. Although be careful you aren't blocking both since it's a subdomain.

You could also add a noindex, nofollow tag to each dev page but then you have to remember to remove those when you push them live to your real domain.

I'd probably go with the Robots.txt option since using the redirect will not allow you to view the site live which I'm assuming would take away from the whole point of having this "staging" sub-domain.

Well said as usual, Takeshi.

Hell I'm thinkin' about skipping the PR all together now and just sending this article out to some online publications instead... we'll see.

Excellent advice and I lean white-hat 99.9% of the time. I think this is a bit grey-hattish though.

The conspiracy theorist in me would say that Cutts would emphasize this even if it wasn't an actual target of their algorithm. I think at this point he has everyone scared and there's a chance that he could say this and not put anything into action. Maybe he'll come back and check it out again 3 months later and see if there has been progress made.. You know? Again, conspiracy at best.

The sites I'm referring to have incredibly thin content and a terrible link profile. Yet they're ranking on page 1 for pretty competitive keywords.. Best content I see on there is prweb or marketwire and it makes me go O_o

Thing is we do build links naturally and appreciate doing so. Our Press Release is actually news-worthy as far as our company goes (it's the release of a new service we've been developing) and if we never read any of this stuff we wouldn't think twice of just throwing a link to the relevant page discussing our new service offerings.. bah.

Nonetheless I think your points are sound and I'm leaning toward playing it safe as well.

"Remember the main aim of your press release is to gain your brand exposure"

WELL SAID SIR!

I really like this the most.

As for whether or not to nofollow, I'm entirely on the fence here. I know what Google says but I don't know what Google does. Tom Roberts, where are you? I saw your comment on the seland thread referenced here and am wondering if you went and built those thousand free PR links for your client??!

I see SO so many sites ranking with nothing but press releases and garbage article submissions... What does it all mean? I don't know. But I do know we are working on a press release to go out this week and I need to make a decision on this...hmmm..

No negative impacts here as far as penalties or otherwise. Just make sure it's really what you want to do. If the page would ever be searched for by a user then keep it indexed regardless of how thin you worry the content might be. Or beef it up.

Also consider using your robots file instead of having to add that tag to all these pages...

-my two cents.

I did! Thank you!

I wasn't intending to lump you in which is why I kept saying things like "he" and "his post." Sorry for the confusion there.

I felt like branding and content had a lot to do with the conversation. I see we agree on this point and I thought we did from the get-go. I don't think the blogger in this case was trying to talk about the micro niche sites that you reference. At least that wasn't the vibe I gathered. He talked about branding and content building and those two things don't seem to match. I agree that what you say blackhat works for is a great example of where it "belongs" or "works" in the short-term.

Anyway thanks.

I don't think your points were wrong Robert no matter your delivery and I hope this experience doesn't deter you from contributing again in the future. People get sensitive on the internet and there is a line but it's easy to cross as we all have different intentions and different ideas of how others perceive our intentions. You got 6 thumbs up on your original post. Seems like it was well regarded as a good one...

Keep on keepin' on everybody! This has been a pretty healthy conversation as far as forum-arguing goes. I've seen some pretty strong examples of how not to do it and this isn't one of them!

Oh my. I think I might cry. I just wrote the longest most thoughtful post in response to this thread addressing everything in an awesome manner, edited it carefully, went to Post it and BOOM! "YOU Don't have Access!" I had been logged out and my post was gone. HOLY COW! This is terrible. I'm going to try and re-hash it but honestly I'm not sure I can get it across the same. Here goes:

Sheesh. I almost liked it better when I wasn't getting email updates to this thread!

First off, my original post I feel may have been misunderstood by you, VIPER. What I was trying to say is that this thread itself was a bit of silly sensationalism. I didn't feel that it was an attack at all which is why I started it off by saying exactly that. When I finished the post with "Silliness" I was more responding to the thread and it's title. I did see some silliness in your blog post as well but when I say "Anyway, silliness" I meant to refer back to my first point which was "hey this isn't an attack at all it's far too soft for that it's simply a counterpoint." Perhaps I should have said that. I thought this thread would go away faster... silly me!

As for the comments on your appearance, I did and do continue to apologize. But I'd like to talk a bit about profiling for a second. We are all guilty of doing it and have all been on the receiving end of it as well. You can try saying you don't ever profile people but the fact is we all do; it's human nature. Whether it be deciding which person to get behind in a grocery-store aisle or deciding that the oldsmobile in the left-lane of the freeway going five-under with their left turn indicator perpetually blinking is most likely a little old lady, we are guilty of it. SO when I see a thread written by a guy named "VIPER" with a picture such as yours and pro-blackhat content I must admit that I found it rather easy to lump you into whatever category. I apologized for this and stand by my apology. Nonetheless, the comments were made in jest and I never saw this thread going as far as it did.

---- Hang on though: as an aside, don't you worry that your name and your appearance might lose you a potential client or two? I'm asking this man-to-man and am not judging at all. I'm truly curious. I may sound like a Dad here (oh wait I am a Dad now!) but where I come from I was always told to take off my hat and glasses and pull up my pants before I went out looking for a job! Again, I am truly curious on your thoughts/experience here. You have clearly seen great success in the SEO world so I mean no disrespect. ----

But I digress, that is not what I wish to talk about here. Again as I said my original post was deleted and I went into greater detail about the nuts and bolts of this thread. I'm afraid I won't be able to do it as well this time around but I'll keep trying -

What I want to touch on is this whole notion of branding and content vs link-building and ranking. I very much am of the opinion that branding and marketing is everything and that a good campaign in the latter will build your SE ranking. Your blog seemed to go against that even though you claim in this thread that it did not. Allow me to quote you a couple times here:

In your blog you wrote:

_ "While I can understand that preaching “build good content, focus on growing your brand’ sounds great and it’s what people want to hear, for a HUGE percentage of search phrases, this is just no longer relevant."_

In this thread you wrote:

"I have never said that building a brand is bad and I still highly advocate writing good content"

See my confusion? This seems incredibly contradictory to me. So in my opinion yes, your blog was in fact saying that building a brand was not helpful. In this I agree with Rand, but I do not fancy myself a Rand-fanboy.

I do agree with his concepts often. That all said I think you are trying a bit hard to be a victim here saying things like "the argument is very one-sided here. No matter what I reply it will be nit-picked apart in defense of Rand." There are multiple posts on here defending your concepts and I think it is unfair to claim that this site is biased. If this site was truly biased you wouldn't see so many people come on here and say "USE MAJESTIC (and sometimes OSE)" in response to threads titled "How do I check backlinks?"

I do understand that blackhat SEO tactics still work. If you looked through my many posts on these forums you would see tons of them complaining about being outranked by blackhats and how they succeed and beat sites that don't use that tactic all the time. It drives me bonkers! But what I don't ever find is these blackhat sites outranking well-established brands with excellent content. I keep seeing claims of this happening thousands of times but don't see examples.

I hate to use it as an example but I can't think of a more apt one: Moz happens to rank number 3 for "SEO" and they have done exactly this...(built a brand with awesome content) Meanwhile there are thousands of blackhat SEOs out there trying to rank for the same term, are there not? Seems like a great example to me...

But I digress. I have to wind down now. I had more things to say and they were all along the lines of "dude I think you're a good guy and I respect your opinions and even agree with some of them! Let's chill!" The thing is I thought the topic title itself was sensationalism and then your blog post carried that same trend. I think you were going for that and I think you succeeded! I know you claim you weren't but if you truly were you don't have to admit it. I'd still like to congratulate you. I think you did well and I'm sure this is actually your opinion on top of that making it a fair topic by all means. But in using Rand's name and the Moz brand you are clearly trying to get the attention of their readership... Right? Cause that is what happened. And since we all know how the internet works, we know that the result is not all that uncommon..

It works! This is a great way to gain some traffic and readers. I for one will most likely visit your blog again in the future and read more of what you have to say.

With that said I truly would like to see more of you around these parts. Regardless of where you stand on link-building concepts the fact is blackhat does work. Short term, long term, that's up for debate on what's better but I think your opinions would lend well to discussion on these forums and I wish you had been a part of many threads I've been in to help better my understanding of why tumblr blog spam is outranking my sites!

Please don't take offense to any of this. I respect you and your opinions and I think everyone else here does as well.

I do think this topic title should have been called something different.. But hey it got the ball rolling on a (maybe)healthy conversation!

• 1 -- well put.

Ha! Hey I'm sorry if I offended you by linking his picture. It was meant mostly as a joke. The guy comes off as a sensationalist trying to draw attention. To me his picture screams that same thought. Perhaps it was off-base.

He claims he's not using Rand's last name in an effort to not rank for that keyword yet he uses his first name and SEOmoz enough times to rank for either. (How many other Rands do you know?)

This whole "SEO for the short-haul" technique baloney is just that: baloney. It only works some of the time and never builds business to last. Go down the list and show me of those "million cases" how many of them are established businesses that will be successful for years to come.

Your post, Yiannis, and this guy's blog post both had the same "I CAN SHOW YOU THOUSANDS OF EXAMPLES" yet none of them are showing me examples of successful businesses ranking and proving they have a place in the market for the long-haul. Not a single example of that provided by this blog.

YouTube video rankings, article rankings.. okay. I get the point. The timing and freshness of that content won out. But it'll go away as quick as it came and what will be left?

I know that blackhat SEO is working in many examples. It works in the industry I'm doing in-house for and it drives me bananas. But I also know that the companies it is working for are not succeeding based on this. Is this because they are not focused on brand-development and a modern marketing strategy? Maybe. That would certainly be part of it if you asked me.

Google is going to screw up and fail at what they set out to do. We know that to be true. But we also know what they are trying to do. What they are trying to do is get rid of these blackhat SEOs and dissemble their tactics from the ground up. They will eventually succeed entirely. They're Google, after all.

I don't know about you but I want to build a company that can withstand the test of time and the power of Google.

I see no attack here. This article was mostly mush imo. I agree with EGOL.

Building your brand is all that SEO should be if you consider that SEO is modern day marketing and your brand should be your number one focus. I looked at this guy's picture and that pretty much summed it up for me.

I also think he's completely missed the point of what Rand is saying. The idea is building a brand first to strengthen your business, gain a following, increase conversion and retention and thus gain organic SERP improvements.

Anyway

Silliness