Big Mess - Multiple Websites
-
I have a customer, a Psychologist, who put up +/-20 websites many years ago. He has 1 main site (with his name as the domain) with hundreds of pages of quality content. The other sites are all exact match domains - anxiety counseling, couples counseling, etc. Some are single page sites, others have a good amount of quality content. Many of the EMD sites were getting ranked on the first page, as was the main site. The money site was ranking on the first page for the best keywords
All of the EMD pages linked back to the main site, many with site wide footer links. The main site did not link back. All of the sites are on the same IP address. These sites have been in place for years. I don't believe that he has a duplicate content problem.
About 8 weeks ago, the rankings for the main site crashed, moving 10 or more SERP pages deep. The EMD sites are still ranking. He has not gotten any nasty-grams from Google in Webmaster Tools.
The Psychologist relies exclusively on organic for his business, and it has taken a significant hit.
1. Has anyone else seen this happen?
2. Is it safe to assume that Google finally nailed him for using a linking scheme?
3. How can we unwind this? The other sites are still generating business, and if those go away, he is really screwed.
4. Will taking down all of the links from the other sites be enough? Would moving the money site to another hosting company on a different IP make a difference? Ideas?
I think the white hat answer would be to take down the EMD sites, and 301 redirect to the main site. The problem is that the loss of business from this process could be catastrophic.
-
I am not sure that "sandboxing" is an appropriate word at this time.
If google takes a manual action against your site they notify you in webmaster tools.
If the problem with your site is detected by algorithm, they simply demote your site.
I honestly think that you need experienced professional help with this.
-
EGOL:
If Google decides to drop your rankings instead of sandboxing your site, do they send you a warning?
-
In my opinion, any answers given here are guesses and are inappropriate to use as an attempt to solve this problem.
This is a high stakes problem. So a detailed evaluation of these sites, their historic linkbuilding practices, the quality of their content, their traffic source history and more should be considered.
If these were my sites I would get a penalty pro to look at them and be willing to pay the cost of a thorough review and recommendation.
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
-
Redirecting an Entire Website?
Is it best to redirect an old website to a new website page by page to like pages or just the entire site all at once to the home page of the new site? I do have about 10 good pages on the site that are worth directing to corresponding pages on the new site. Just trying to figure out what is going to preserve the most link juice. Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | photoseo10 -
Should we reinstate the old website?
In a nut shell we had a great site that performed well and grew month on month but it perhaps looked a bit dated. A decision was taken to build a new site and the job given to a PR agency for some reason. All the titles, H1 tags, page content and url structure was changed and now the site has drop 50% of organic traffic. I've been tasked with trying to rebuild rankings but so far it's not going well. A snapshot of the old website still exists and i'm very tempted to have it reinstated in the hopes that our traffic will recover. What are your thoughts?
Technical SEO | | etienneb0 -
SEO for a a static content website
Hi everyone, We would like to ask suggestions on how to improve our SEO for our static content help website. With the release of each new version, our company releases a new "help" page, which is created by an authoring system. This is the latest page: http://kilgray.com/memoq/2015/help-en/ I have a couple of questions: 1- The page has an index with many links that open up new subpages with content for users. It is impossible to add title tags to this subpages, as everything is held together by the mother page. So it is really hard to for users to find these subpage information when they are doing a google search. 2- We have previous "help" pages which usually rank better in google search. They also have the same structure (1 page with big index and many subpages) and no metadata. We obviously want the last version to rank better, however, we are afraid exclude them from bots search because the new version is not easy to find. These are some of the previous pages: http://kilgray.com/memoq/2014R2/help-en/ http://kilgray.com/memoq/62/help-en/ I would really appreciate suggestions! Thanks
Technical SEO | | Kilgray0 -
Website Hierarchy Question / Discussion
Hey all, I am looking to get the opinions off the community to help settle a discussion / debate. We are looking at how a site is laid out and which is the preferred method. There are two options: www.site.com --> /category-page --> /product-page (With this option, you always have the domain name and then page, no matter where in the site you actually are, and how many clicks it took you to get there). Your URL to the end page here would be www.site.com/product-page www.site.com --> /category-page --> /category-page/product-page --> (With this option, you into a defined structure). Your URL to the end page here would be www.site.com/category-page/product-page If you have a moment, I would be interested to know your views on which you would consider to be your preferred method and why. Thanks, Andy
Technical SEO | | Andy.Drinkwater0 -
Website content has been scraped - recommended action
So whilst searching for link opportunities, I found a website that has scraped content from one of our websites. The website looks pretty low quality and doesn't link back. What would be the recommended course of action? Email them and ask for a link back. I've got a feeling this might not be the best idea. The website does not have much authority (yet) and a link might look a bit dodgy considering the duplicate content Ask them to remove the content. It is duplicate content and could hurt our website. Do nothing. I don't think our website will get penalised for it since it was here first and is in the better quality website. Possibly report them to google for scraping? What do you guys think?
Technical SEO | | maxweb0 -
Targeting multiple keywords with index page
Quick keyword question.... I just started working with a client that is ranking fairly well for a number of keywords with his index page. Right now he has a bunch of duplicate titles, descriptions, etc across the entire site. There are 5 different keywords in the title of the index page alone. I am wondering if it OK to target 3 different keywords with the index page? Or, if I should cut it down to 1. Think blue widget, red widget, and widget making machines. I want each of the individual keywords to improve but don't want to lose what I have either. Any ideas? THANKS!!!!
Technical SEO | | SixTwoInteractive0 -
How do I resolve Twin domains? redirect website.com to www.website.com?
I am new to this website. Tried to run a campain and got a warning that website.com resolves to www.website.com which hinders SERP by competing for Keyword indexing!. (website is my domain name) Would appreciate help with this. Thanks. S.H. PS: here is the exact wording of error : We have detected that the domain www.yfvaccine.com and the domain yfvaccine.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here.
Technical SEO | | sherohass0 -
Do you validate you websites?
Do you consider the guidelines from http://validator.w3.org/ when setting up a new website? As far as I know they don't influence rankings ... What is your opinion about that topix?
Technical SEO | | petrakraft0