Our main domain has thousands of subdomains with same content (expired hosting), how should we handle it?
-
Hello,
Our client allows users to create free-trial subdomains and once the trial expires, all the domains have the same page. If people stick, their own websites are hosted on the subdomain.
Since all these expired trials subdomains have the same content and are linking towards the Homepage, should they be nofollows?
Has anyone dealt with something similar?
Thanks very much in advance,
-
Thanks everyone, really helpful!
-
If its essentially a duplicate, thin content Login Screen... NoIndex, No Follow the page.
-
I would say it is unnatural, and therefore any links you have should be no-followed.
-
No. Thin content carries algorithmic penalty as well. Careful. Might want to stick with option 2.
-
Hi everyone,
Thanks for your recommendations. In a way, every subdomain is custom since every client's name is different and it prompts the client to login back into cPanel to reactivate the hosting.
The subdomains are not in a way 'expired', they are expired from a customer's point of view, but they are active and there is no duplicate content, since it says 'You are trying to access x.y.com', so it is different for every subdomain.
But they are all very low quality one-page subdomains, is it useful to have them as links towards the main site?
-
- Custom 404 page?
-
Options:
1.) set rel="canonical" tags on all of them referencing the main page within the href portion of the tag
2.) no-crawl, no-index the pages
3.) all of the above
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Teaser Content Help!!
I'm in the process of a redesign and upgrade to Drupal 8 and have used Drupal's taxonomy feature to add a fairly large database of Points of Interest, Services etc. initially this was just for a Map/Filter for site users. The developer also wants to use teasers from these content types (such as a scenic vista description) as a way to display the content on relevant pages (such as the scenic vistas page, as well as other relevant pages). Along with the content it shows GPS coordinates and icons related to the description. In short, it looks cool, can be used in multiple relevant locations and creates a great UX. However, many of these teasers would basically be pieces of content from pages with a lot of SEO value, like descriptive paragraphs about scenic viewpoints from the scenic viewpoints page. Below is an example of how the descriptions of the scenic viewpoints would be displayed on the scenic viewpoints pages, as well as other potential relevant pages. HOW WILL THIS AFFECT THE SEO VALUE OF THE CONTENT?? Thanks in advance for any help, I can't find an answer anywhere. About 250 words worth of content about a scenic vista. There’s about 8 scenic vista descriptions like this from the scenic vistas page, so a good chunk of valuable content. There are numerous long form content pages like this that have descriptions and information about sites and points of interest that don't warrant having their own page. For more specific content with a dedicated page, I can just the the intro paragraph as a teaser and link to that specific page of content. Not sure what to do here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | talltrees0 -
25% of expired domains came with a Google manual penalty
25% of expired domains purchased came with a Google manual penalty, even when Moz spam score was 0 . Read the whole case study here: http://www.authoritywriters.com/2017/10/google-manual-penalty-on-expired-domains.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bluishclouds0 -
Medical / Health Content Authority - Content Mix Question
Greetings, I have an interesting challenge for you. Well, I suppose "interesting" is an understatement, but here goes. Our company is a women's health site. However, over the years our content mix has grown to nearly 50/50 between unique health / medical content and general lifestyle/DIY/well being content (non-health). Basically, there is a "great divide" between health and non-health content. As you can imagine, this has put a serious damper on gaining ground with our medical / health organic traffic. It's my understanding that Google does not see us as an authority site with regard to medical / health content since we "have two faces" in the eyes of Google. My recommendation is to create a new domain and separate the content entirely so that one domain is focused exclusively on health / medical while the other focuses on general lifestyle/DIY/well being. Because health / medical pages undergo an additional level of scrutiny per Google - YMYL pages - it seems to me the only way to make serious ground in this hyper-competitive vertical is to be laser targeted with our health/medical content. I see no other way. Am I thinking clearly here, or have I totally gone insane? Thanks in advance for any reply. Kind regards, Eric
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_Lifescript0 -
Duplicate Content and Titles
Hi Mozzers, I saw a considerable amount of duplicate content and page titles on our clients website. We are just implementing a fix in the CMS to make sure that these are all fixed. What changes do you think I could see in terms of rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KarlBantleman0 -
Content not indexed
How come i google content that resides on my website and on my homepage and my site doesn't come up? I know the content is unique i wrote that. I have a feeling i have some kind of a crawling issue but cannot determine what it is. I ran the crawling test and other tools and didn't find anything. Google shows me that pages are indexed but yet its weird try googling snippets of content and you'll see my site isnt anywhere. Have you experienced that before? First i thought it was penalized but i submitted the reconsideration request and it came back clear, No manual spam action found. And i did not get any message in my GWMT either. Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CMTM0 -
SEO value in baclklink from blog.domain VS domain
Will a back-link from "domain.com/abc" and "blog.domain.com/abc" have same value from an SEO perspective? Assume same article written on both sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen
I have been told the bots look at the domain value and the only links from blogs that have less value are in case of comments. As long as the "blog.domain/abc" page includes a full article and not a blog comment then it counts fully for SEO. Is this correct?0 -
Redirect on exact match domain to Brand domain question :)
Hi, If I have a website with the domain crazysocks.co.uk and a title tag 'black socks' would I see any benefit redirecting blacksocks.co.uk to crazysocks.co.uk, to give my keyword 'black socks' a boost in the SE's from the EMD. I see it loads where an EMD is indexed for its term but when you click the result it redirects to a branded domain. I personally cant see this being true but wanted to double check.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
What would be the ideal method to handling auto-generated product content across network of dealership websites?
We have recently started work with a dealership group that operates ~20 separate dealerships (different locations and brands) and individual websites for each. The group also operates two umbrella websites for the group brand that shows the inventory across All 20 dealerships. All websites are basically using the same template and all product listings are from the same data source (same back-end system). All websites are currently also hosted on the same IP address. Typically we work with clients to rectify duplicate content issues and work towards having just one version of any piece of content. However, this is a unique situation in that each dealership has a legitimate brand and marketing need for having their own website. It also is not realistic to ask the client to create unique content for the same product listing 22x. We understand there are numerous options to consider but I would appreciate hearing any advice/feedback from individuals who have dealt with similar situations. If you know of any good resources on such a scenario, that would also be helpful to verify our thoughts. NOTE: the duplicate content for product inventory is not across all 22 sites but just usually between 3-4 for each product. Often each product listing is shown on 1 or 2 dealerships and the 2 umbrella sites (one is the main group site and the other a product used/clearance site). Currently we can see multiple domains indexed for the same product listings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BryanSmith0
