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Secondly I have a dilemma; I am currently contemplating merging with another company, now this company have a network of well over 500 sites. I have done my background work and all the sites are spammy sites, using unethical SEO methods, however I have been in SEO myself now for over 6 years.
Now the problem is I’m simply not sure, I have had sites that use the same methods and I have cleaned the onsite up and waited for lets base this all on Google, for Google to re-cache and access then rank accordingly, however with a network of 500+ all in different industries I’m not sure if this will all be too much.
I have rebuilt one site to see if I could spot the definite penalty point so to speak, and well it seems to be moving up on Msn, Yahoo, Ask etc however not Google, I’m guessing with a little time this should change.
I have looked over most of the domain names in questions and bar the spamming of keywords and bad link partners I cant spot too much of a worry… however saying this would it in your opinion be easier to strip everything and start from the ground up, due to the sheer size of this I’m left somewhat puzzled, I’m not sure where to start and on what so to speak, this is why I’m here writing this, I was looking to see if any of you guys n girls have come across something like this or if you have any input.
If one of you, being a successful SEO specialist was offered this chance what would you do? Would you try n build all the once ranking sites back up or would you carry on as normally with your SEO work?
If anyone would like a look into one of the sites in question please feel free to message me.
The bottom line is revenue. If the merger will benefit you, then do it. There is a lot of short term gain to be made, but may it hurt your own sites in the long run.
I am unclear on the "merger" Are you taking control and cleaning up their 500+ sites or just joining their network?
It is a business decision. What is best for you in the long term?
The merger as such is in-fact another web development company we are both based in the same location and that side of things is great, it’s the whole taking on his network that’s the scary part so to speak. His sites will not be linking into any of our own sites, at least not until everyone of them has been recompiled fully.
The pointers I am unsure of ok is these:
With there being so many sites my new partner is somewhat worried, I have given my advise and he is some what still unsure, the main point really is he uses link spamming and over kills everything, now this would be fine on a smaller scale as you know, however he thinks if we strip everything (the links off) his little rankings he has just now on MSN, Ask, Yahoo will fall. How I see it if he doesn’t strip everything he will never rank again in Google.
I have looked into his sites and none are banned, however I have seen his old log files and they did in-deed used to be at the top of the game, this is not the case now. His pages are cached and listed but yet nothing is ranking on G, now I have tested this in the past ok but it would be good to hear your point of thinking from another expert so to speak, what is your view on onsite optimisation, by this I mean obviously anchor text links, file/nav/dir structure, meta data of course content, but mainly code compression….
I am a firm believer on what you see should be what you get, and his code just now on all the sites is huge, it by far out ways any content, this I put down to FrontPage and little or no coding skills.
Do you think by stripping all the spam links that have little or no relevance to the sites in mention and fully optimising the sites will have any bad effects so to speak, on the other search engines?
I can only see this bringing him and myself good fortune and respect, he is not sure, after all he has built these sites up from scratch and I can see where he is coming from.
I think from how I see things today, that my partner still believes in links that point to your sites, I think he doesn’t think of related links with relevance to his sites, if you know what I mean, he doesn’t target links in any manor and he has one set of links, with all his sites, on every page of his sites, this renders in my opinion as spammy links.
Ok now I am somewhat bad at explaining things but here goes….
Widget site has around 400 links on the bottom page, all pointing to the clients other none related Widget sites.
On this Widget site he overkills keywords, his code ratio is huge and most have little or no content….
So if I strip all the spammy links off, and optimise the code, and add content, then wait until G has picked it up, then begin the offsite promotion, how the heck can this be bad?
My partner also has SEO knowledge even if it is somewhat outdated he did used to be good. I am simply getting confused on the scale of things? Am I doubting my skills? Or does he have points?
I am aware that these 7+ year old sites may or may not go into Google sandboxing but heck that’s better than doing nothing rite?
Sorry to make you read I think I’m having an off day :) I would be glad to hear your thoughts on the matter.
Can you insure that any changes you make will stay long enough to see if they work out?
The impression I get is that the two of you are opposites on your approaches to SEO. Will he allow you to change his work for the long term?
What does he want you to do with your sites? Will he add your sites to the 400+ links on his pages?
Again it comes down to revenue, What can you gain from this? What might you lose?
He is still active however I have been showing him articles left right and centre that have in-fact proved I am right on a lot of things, I’m hope that someone here at some point will talk along the same line I think.
I have just come out of a meeting with him, and well I have been given the go ahead to do as I see fit, and he has assured me that its all in my hands if I want it, the thing is do I want it? These days I don’t know what I want, do I want to work? Do I want to be a mum? So many scenarios these day lol why isn’t life simple any more….
Anyway back to the matter in hand, are you all under the same thinking as me, by this I mean the network has to be disconnected, then one by one build the content up, optimise the onsite code, then promote offsite when all is clear to do so, after well however long it takes for G to pick up on it then slowly, slowly start interlinking with relevant sites as n when type of thing?
Brittney
The downside is as you say, it's a lot of work. We want to make sure you and your partner are in it for the long term. It's not going to be a quick fix.
The upside is that it sounds like you can set your own pace. That is always a good thing.
Good Luck.
Again thanks
