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Please keep me posted what you decide to you. As awful as this is, it is nice to know we are not alone. We may just be rebranding and starting from scratch since Google has not provided any indication when they will release the next update. Also, I came across this a couple of weeks ago so it could be several months: http://searchengineland.com/google-we-are-working-on-making-the-penguin-updated-continuously-222247.

@Gary, Would this work between a .com & .net website? I'm willing to test anything at this point. Thanks!

Thanks Ruth for your feedback. I just wanted to address your 2 points above:

1. we actually have been adding all new links to our original disavow file, so we are all set there.

2. yes, we do understand that the loss of links did cause a drop in rankings. Due to this, we've actually started building out natural links throuhh outreach & PR, redesigned the entire site & updated all content as well Along with ongoing contemy creation on site and off.

With those things in mind, is there anything else left? I'm just wondering if we're completely missing something and in getting desperate - is this domain just dead?

And thanks for the heads up on the hreflang, that was a little over my head.

Thanks for your feedback

Thank you for the lengthy response! I am not sure how to use hreflang but will look into it more this week. As for the your final question, our manual penalty was revoked in Oct. 2013 & it just hasn't performed worth a damn since. We updated all content and are working on a design refresh now in order to support responsive design - hoping that would help as we'd hate to change the domain but we're just at a loss & getting desperate. This is out only client who came to use for this type of cleanup service that has not yet recovered.

Hello,

I have a site that just keeps getting hit with a ton of bad, unnatural backlinks due to the sins from previous SEO companies they've hired. About every quarter, I have to add more bad links to their disavow file... still. Is it time to move them to a new domain? Perhaps a .net? If so, do we just completely trash the old domain & not redirect it? I've never had a client like this in the past but they still want to maintain their branded name.

Thanks for your feedback!

I was wondering what an SEO with years of experience used to perform outreach campaigns? What software (Buzzstream, Inkybee), what email service (MailChimp), what prospecting tools (Buzzsumo)? What's the ultimate pairing of software and tools for maximum results (with the best client-facing KPIs)?

Thanks Federico for the detailed response and quick feedback!  I was not 100% sure how subdomains were treated, so thank you for clearing that up. I definitely needed to pick some expert brains on this one. Looks like we will go with a separate WP install under a /learning/ directory just to provide our root domain with better authority from all this good content:)

Hello,

With so much emphasis for SEO to develop unique, information content I am working to build out a "Learning Center' for one of my clients in the finance industry. As you can guess, this is quite a competitive space and their rankings have become somewhat stagnant so we are looking for new ways to develop original, share-worthy content for the site. So my question is, in order for them to retain the most SEO value should we develop this on a subdomain such as learning.website.com or a new domain altogether.

Note: We do not want to develop this under the current site domain as it we want o only post informational content & courses and keep these pieces outside of the "sales" side of their website. Therefore, I thought the subdomain would be the best bet so that we would retain the most value for SEO... however, some of my colleagues disagree. Some vote it should be within a directory under website.com. Some say a new site & domain altogether. My vote is to place this under a subdomain such as http://learning.website.com with the idea that the site's authority will influence the root http://website.com.

The argument I was provided against the subdomain was: "essentially adding a subdomain would mean you're sort of starting over again in terms of building authority.  adding a folder will ride the coattails off the already established authority."

Lastly, for clarification, the current domain is set up as http://website.com so the subdomain would be http://learning.website.com, the directory would be set up as http://website.com/learning/ and a whole new domain would be http://newwebsite.com.

This is for a Wordpress site.

Thoughts?  All feedback is much appreciated!