I would increase the amount of great content and improve the quality of the content that is already in place.  Content is what people link to.  Great content = quality links = high DA.

If the rankings of the criminal defense pages have direct links then those links are helpful to any query that any page of the site competes for.  So, I would not delete them.

There are law firms with strong websites that rule the SERPs for everything in their town.   Their office takes any call that comes in, accepts the cases in practice areas where they have interest and expertise, and refers the rest to other firms for a referral fee.

The specific page has.....  >500 domains linking to it.

This is rocket fuel.   Irrelevant articles help lots of websites.

Find the person who wrote that article for you and give them a really nice gift.

Ask them to write another article about plants in the office.

Ask them to come up with some great photos of plants (that you are legally able to distribute as screensavers, branded lightly with your domain) and give them to people.

Advertise the new article about plants on the popular page, advertise the screen saver on your popular page.

I don't think that you are going to kill a software giant with irrelevant articles but I believe from experience that they can be very helpful to your rankings.   Plus, we make a few sales every month to people who landed on our website to consume irrelevant content - and the products that we sell are irrelevant to the content and damn few people want what is sold on that site.

So, how big of a mega menu are we talking about?

Ten links?  Fifty?  A hundred?

I think if you go waaaaaayyy to big it can be a problem with both usability and SEO.  But the SEO problem is not in the link dilution.

Wow!   Tom, that was a very generous and expert response.

Nice work!

I'd slap some big Adsense on it and enjoy!  

I believe that one off topic page will not hurt anything - especially if the page is an outstanding example of content for its topic.

I know sites that publish on a wide range of content and have fantastic rankings.  These sites were once single topic,  then departed with a single page that struck gold - and then started plowing that field into a hundred pages,  and soon ranking #1 for the single-word root keyword.    They then hit gold on a second topic, and a third.  Now these sites have diverse branches but have found ways to interrelate the topics.

I don't think that Google has a problem with conflation.  You might even make Google think that the two topics are complementary.

This problem has been around for over 20 years and thousands of companies who have used shortcuts lost a domain to penalties and algorithms.  They call this the doorway page problem, the jump page problem, the cookie cutter page problem, the portal page problem, and a dozen other names.

If you want all of these pages you will need to put a team of people onto the task of writing substantive content for each city.  If this company is truly large enough to deserve thousands of doorway pages then they should have the resources to author substantive and unique content for each one.

In the question between a subfolder and a subdomain...  it is clear and it is murky...

Search engines say things and often do the things that they say.  They also do things without sayin' that they did them and you are left to figure out what happened or how things work on your own.

If you have been running websites for a long time (24 years here), you might know that Google and other search engines have treated subdomains and folders differently,  identically and murkily.   It depends upon what year and month you are talking about.

**The constant is that subfolders have always inherited ranking ability from their parent domain, and will likely do that into the future.  **

So, if you want assurance into the future, using a subfolder is your best bet.

Looking at DA... it is irrelevant in the subdomain and subfolder discussion.  DA is a moz number that kinda correlates with search engine rankings, but just part of the time.   Ranking ability and DA are different things.

Go to archive.org to see your old title tags.

Your SERP CTR can drop when Google changes the SERP interface.  They can slap more images, ads, videos, "people also ask" , news and various types of rubbish that absorb the clicks before your organic rankings are seen.    Competitors above or below you could start adding kickass prices, free shipping, or free beer to their title tags.

.... but, my usual suspicion is that the developers monkeyed with something.

If you do one or two per day... it will be enough to get you in trouble by the end of next year.

I am going to explain how I understand this.  I could be wrong on some of the details because of two different reasons.... 1) I simply am wrong... or .... 2) I am correct according to what search engines have said in public but they are doing something different in practice.

When nofollow was first introduced a lot of people used it to "sculpt" the flow of pagerank.  They were told at that time by some search engine employees that pagerank did not flow into nofollowed pages.  That is how search engines who made public statements about it were supposed to be treating it in the beginning.

Later we learned that google (and maybe other) search engines changed their mind on how they handle nofollow and that change was to evaporate ALL pagerank that would have flowed into a nofollow link.  In that situation it would be a bad idea to use nofollow because the pagerank was permanently lost.

Do they still handle nofollow links that way?  I don't know.

However......  how I currently understand it is that if you designate a page as noindex / follow then pagerank flows into that page and through the links on that page.  This would conserve any pass-through pagerank but would result in a loss of any pagerank that is retained in that page (or maybe it all passes through since the page is no index - I don't know).

So, if I had pages that I wanted to link to on my site but didn't want in the index I would use noindex / follow to allow the pagerank that flows into those pages to pass through to other pages on my site.  But I would never be  sure that it really works that way.  Also, keep in mind that there are numerous search engines and there could be many different ways of treating these links - and pagerank is a substance unique to google.

If anyone understands this differently or suspect that it does not work as explained, please let us know.

many seo companies put their site link in their client site's footer too!

I think that this is a good idea.  It tells me who I should not hire.

I am in desperate need of a starting point.

You start by doing what most other ecommerce webmasters are not willing to do....That is..... Write Unique and Substantive Product Descriptions.

Anyone who gives you a number for this question is full of beans.

This is one of the most difficult questions in SEO and most of the people who are charging clients for SEO can not answer it.

Lots of SEOs have clients on a $500/month plan when the target that they are attacking needs many times that much to become competitive.

Let me give just a couple reasons why this question is so difficult and why nobody here can give you an answer with the information that you provided.

====================

Your question is making a straight comparison....   it assumes that you are racing a stationary target.  The target is not stationary.   This question is really like this...

Two cars are driving on a road.... Car B leaves when Car A is already 100 miles down the road and traveling at a rate of 50 miles per hour.   How fast will Car B have to drive to overtake Car A?

The answer is a velocity AND a time.   And the question as I stated it assumes no acceleration.

If Car B drives 51 miles per hour... will you have the patience and budget for that long of a wait?  Do you have the resources needed to drive 70 and not be stopped by Google?

=====================

Another example...

George Pickett was a southern general at the Battle of Gettysburg who was ordered by Robert E. Lee to run the Union Army off of Cemetery Ridge. To do that Pickett's troops would need to cross a mile-wide open field in broad daylight under an absolute hail of enemy fire.

The field was one mile wide, it was up a slight incline - if they were slow in crossing they would be mowed down...

The Union had hundreds of troops dug in and positioned on the ridge and ready to open fire - if Pickett had only a few troops they would be mowed down....

So Pickett needed to order an enormous number of troops across that field and order them to run their asses off to engage the Union Army quickly - or die in the middle of the field.

If they failed in getting a enough troops... if they failed in getting enough speed... if they failed in getting enough determination and courage... then they would be mowed down.

Your job is similar to Pickett's... you must get an enormous number of links... you must get them quickly... and you must get them before your budget runs out... and you better hope that your budget is big enough.

Pickett knew that his field was a mile wide.. he knew how many troops that he had. He could see Union troops on the other side of the field at the top of the ridge.

Pickett's generals complained when they were told the battle plan... but Pickett pointed at the Ridge.

This battle was lost on bad math.

But your problem is even more difficult... the field is getting wider as you cross it because the target is moving away from you.

==================

And your problem is also more difficult because links have different values.  One link from the Pope's site is worth a thousand from pedestrian sites.

Furthermore... different pages compete with different amounts of vigor.   I might have a fifty word page but my competitor might have 2000 words, ten images, a video, and tables of data.  Big difference.

===================

So, how is an SEO to know what is needed?

1. You run the keyword difficulty tool and get a feel for the numbers (which contain much confusion).

2. You go out to those SERPs and visit the sites and get a feel for their authority and content quality.

3. Then you use open site explorer to see if the Pope is on their side.

4. Then you decide if you are up to beating their content, beating their numbers, beating their quality.... and if you can do that quickly enough before the conditions of engagement change or your budget runs out.

After all of that you decide on taking the gamble or not.

Hi Matt.  I really like this question, but even more, I like that it is pinned to the top of Q&A and hope it will stay here for a week or more.  I would like to learn what others are doing on this and other topics.   I hope that "pinned questions for discussion" become a regular thing in Q&A.

======================================================

CONTENT CREATION:

1. My site is an info site and I currently have a "future content map" that contains enough articles to keep me writing long after my death :-)Most of the articles that I write are on that map, some are not.  The thing that determines what I write today is a "motivation to write" that is triggered by an opportunity to acquire a few really nice photos or graphics to illustrate a new article perfectly.  I believe that a great photo or graphic at the top of the page can be more important to an article's success than what I write. The visitor needs inspiration to start reading and more photos to help "pull them down the page".

2. Once I have the motivation to write, I don't write.  Instead I spend one or two days reading the best information that I can find on the topic.  This might be on the web or in the collection of books at my office, which grows because I often buy a new one as I prepare for writing an article.   While reading I have a couple sheets of paper that I fill with notes.  These are ideas, topics that I want to cover in the article, sketches, calculations, etc. that can be used in the article.  Once that is finished I write a title, then the subheadings, and then arrange subheadings in order, with an effort to have a photo or graphic to illustrate each subheading - but that is not essential.

I have been active in the industry served by my website for the past 45 years, I could just jump into writing the articles, but a day or two of preparing before I write makes a big difference in the quality of what I produce.   My goal is to write a general article that contains… 1) the basics of the topic, 2) the questions that people are asking, 3) what they should know that they are not asking, 4) misconceptions that are out there, 5) a few surprises that most people don’t know about.

3. The actual "writing" is done in the HemingwayApp, which helps me keep sentences simple and spelling/grammar correct.  Writing might take one to three days, and when I get close to finishing I leave the article to work on another motivation.  Then, days, weeks, months later, I return to the article to improve it, add new ideas, new photos, etc. and bring it to completion. The interruption allows me to consider the article with a fresh mind.  At this point the article often goes to a professional editor who helps with clarity and solves any language and punctuation problems.

4. Then the article is placed on a webpage.  Lay-out is important to be sure that the photos are placed in relevant locations and ads are placed where they will be seen and engaged.  After that I read the article one final time and make adjustments to the text and image captions, so that they work well with one another.\

CONTENT DISTRIBUTION INTEGRATION and ONSITE PROMOTION

I don't distribute my content to other websites.  It is too hard to produce to give away.  So, I make sure that it is carefully integrated into my own website where it will be seen by lots of visitors.   This starts by placing an attractive image and link to the article on the homepage.  Then on its relevant category pages in an obvious position.  It will be moved in the future and placed on the page according to its click-earning ability.   It is also added (according to relevance) to "related content" boxes, "suggested reading" lists that appear on every page of the website.

When an article is highly related to another on the site I will place small ads for it within the body of the related article.  I also have lots of hypertext links on my site - similar to Wikipedia, and most new articles have dozens of those links built to them.  I am lucky that my visitors like my content and promote it for me.  That allows me to get right back to work on the next article.

RECEIVING DISTRIBUTED CONTENT

I receive lots of solicitations from people who want to contribute an article to my website.  Guest authors have contributed about 15% of them.  Most people who contact me write… “Hey Egol, I really like your website and could write a few articles for you.  Are you interested?  I can write about any topic.”

They don’t identify their expertise, they don’t say what qualifies them to write for my industry, they don’t show me relevant samples of their work.  After following up on them for a few years I learned they were a  waste of time.  If I listen to them for a minute on the phone or read the first paragraph of an article proposal, I can tell that they don’t have the language of the industry.  Now, I delete these offers.

I am not a noob in the industry, but there are a lot of topics that I refuse to write about because I don’t know enough about them.  The people who have contributed guest articles usually contact me saying…. “I don’t see anything on your site about Brass Widgets.  I have been researching/teaching/building/writing about them for the past X years and would be glad to write an article or two that explains this/that/etc.  Here’s a couple photos of my recent work”.

This person has photos, I can find info about him online, if we talk by phone or exchange a couple emails before I agree to consider an article I can tell that he isn’t a noob.  I then send a message that explains what I would like to see in their article and ask if they are still interested.

All of the articles that I have received this way have been great.  They are written by experienced people who have a “message to get out” and not by people who are trying to make a quick score.  I usually pay them and send a gift when the article is published.

Lots of people are hung-up on using their brand name in titles.    I think that they should consider some of the examples below.... and use their imagination to appeal to the searcher. Let's be honest... brand names make a really sleepy title tag...

Product Name | KickA$$ Price

Product Name | Free Shipping

Product Name | A Phrase that Elicits Clicks

Product Name | Most Popular Uses

Product Name | Immediate Shipping

Product Name | What the Competition is Keeping Secret

Product Name | Buy Now and Get Free Beer

Just saying....  I would spend that sponsorship money on beer.   Guaranteed enjoyment.  No worries.

Two hundred links, going out to a list of sponsors, many of whom might be sponsors only for the manipulative benefit... sounds like a footprint that would stand out on the Google webspam radar.

Actually, I wouldn't buy beer.  I would spend the money on content.

I don't think that there is a sandbox.  A new site can be launched  and not have  any problems that people call a "sandbox".

I think that the problem is.... other websites scrape new content from you and post it on their site... then you  get filtered.  I think that has been happening for years but since nobody believes that is true they call it a "sandbox".

I know that this comment is going to get me a lot of thumbs down.   

I understand with a 301 redirect, the final URL would have lost about 15% of the link juice.

It used to be that 301 redirects resulted in a loss of linkjuice.  That is no longer true, as stated by John Mueller of Google, and Gary Illyes.  https://moz.com/blog/301-redirection-rules-for-seo

However - if after some time (e.g. 2 months, or 1 year) I remove the redirection - is the original page going to have any SEO juice, or did it already lose all of it?

ALL of my 301 redirects will still in place when I am dead.  My continuity plan passed on to my heirs tells them that they better keep all of the 301s in place or face a possible substantial loss of income.  If you remove the 301 you have no guarantee that linkjuice will still fllow.... but you do have a guarantee that any human who clicks that link will find air.

In your situation...  with these URLs being previously redirected... I would simply remove the redirect and use the current page.  It might take Google a long time to reindex them unless you submit each of them for indexing.   I would try that with a few and see if Google accepts them, indexes them and returns them to a reasonable ranking.