Can subdomains avoid spam penalizations?

[fablau]

Hello everyone,

I have a basic question for which I couldn't find a definitive answer for.

Let's say I have my main website with URL:

www.mywebsite.com

And I have a related affiliates website with URL:

affiliates.mywebsite.com

Which includes completely different content from the main website. Also, both domains have two different IP addresses.

Are those considered two completely separate domains by Google? Can bad links pointing to affiliates.mywebsite.com affect www.mywebsite.com in any way?

Thanks in advance for any answer to my inquiry!

[fablau]

Sure, I understand, that makes sense. Thank you for your help!

[Vijay-Gaur]

Hi Fabrizo,

As answered by Joshua Belland in above answer, you will need to be careful with how you plan it out.

The IP and DNS need to be on a different server.

Be careful about how prtovide link for these with each other.

Regards,

Vijay

[fablau]

Sorry guys, I wasn't enough clear with my first question above, it was actually too generic.

To cut to the chase, I am talking about our main website:

www.virtualsheetmusic.com (IP 66.29.153.48)

and our affiliate website which is:

affiliates.virtualsheetmusic.com (IP 66.29.153.50)

They have 2 different IPs, but they are on the same server and same network, of course their are on the same IP block.

And I'd like to know to what extent the activity/status of one site can affect the other, but from what you are asking, I guess they could affect each other to some extent. I mean, Google could understand that they are part of the same "network" and then associate them anyway... right?

[signet_int]

Are these subdomain properties on different A class ip blocks or different C class ip blocks?

It think this all depends. If the IP addresses are in the same neighborhood or on the same subnets as each other then I would say yes. But beyond that you have to think about several other foot prints to look for:

• Are the nameservers the same?
• Are these ip addresses assigned to different regions?
• Are you interlinking these web properties?
• Even the fact that the subdomain is still associated with the domain makes nervous and only because that is easy for Google to track. If you think about how may other data points they use to find footprints in their algorithm, I don't see why that wouldn't be one of them.

I would be careful with RankBrain continuously evolving and seeing how much turbulence there has been in the serps lately. Personally, my small PBN is completely on separate A Class IPs, with custom name servers, different hosts, and I only put premium content on it. It's not great for quick affiliate gigs, but it certainly helps sustain long term growth.

[Vijay-Gaur]

Hi Fabrizo,

Yes, they would be treated as different entities, as a precaution, I would recommend the geographical location of the server IP to be far off and not from the same IP block.

Thanks,

Vijay

[fablau]

Thank you Vijay for your extensive answer, but as I wrote above, each sub-domain has its own separate IP address. So... if each sub-domain has its own IP address, are they treated as two completely different websites?

[Vijay-Gaur]

Hi Fabrizo,

A subdomain is treated a different entity, however since it comes from the same IP, it's risky to create backlinks to main the site and subdomain. Let me try to answer your question by giving you an example, where we experimented with the idea of subdomain and main site linking , it would help you understand how google treats them as different entities.

We had a client who runs one of his donation campaign for his project from his subdomain and used the main domain for commercial purpose.

He was linking both domains in reciprocal links to send traffic to donation subdomain from the main site and vice versa. The results were shocking as the donation website was ranking far better on even commercial keywords better than main website. We did a deeper analysis and found out the donation website was out-performing main website in terms of high authority contextual backlinks. After some time, the main site started dipping more on the organic traffic and results, we analysed and concluded it was reciprocal linking that was the source of the problem.

We had to make a choice either to remove reciprocal backlinks or test the subdomain on a separate IP. First, we removed the reciprocal links (even if the client was not ready easily) just to prove to the client that it was subdomain links that were causing the problem, the results were good as the main site recovered the ranks and traffic (we also implemented our planned off-page for both the sites) .

Now, this helped us conclude that same IP + subdomain was an issue but we were not sure whether moving to another server would help (not only IP, we had made clear that we wanted a separate location for server IP from hosting company). We shifted the IP first and then watched the results , the donation site was steadily improving on donation related keywords and dipping on commercial keywords, on the other hand, the main website crept up slowly in ranks on commercial keywords (they were medium-high competition keywords).

We made it clear to the client, that this time the links won't be reciprocal and he has to decide his priority about which site he wants to give follow and no follow links. The client wanted the backlinks from donation to the main site with do-follow links, so we created the same. This further helped our commercial website rank to improve, we are still running the websites in the same mode and the results are good.

I hope this answers your query and would help you have a decision. if you have further questions, please feel free to respond and ask.

Regards,

Vijay