Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hello Blue, Thanks for your input several days ago. I apologize for the delay in getting back to you. I was on vacation. Anyway, I appreciate your words of wisdom. I have been digging into the Open Site Explorer but I am far from an expert at this point. That said, I shall continue to persevere. Thanks again. Eric

Yes my thoughts were initially that the site was hacked. Interesting that the technique still works. I googled Cialis online and found that the top 5 results were all black hat. So I guess Google is still vulnerable.  Thanks for the answer.

Hi Cornelius! It looks like there are some alternatives in this Quora thread: https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-sites-offering-free-video-distribution-services-similar-to-those-formerly-offered-by-TubeMogul/ Does that help at all?

Thanks Rand! That tells it all

Very good to hear, thanks Shawn!  The goal is to use absolute canonicals, but for a period of time, we may have to use protocol relative.  The redirects in place should avoid any duplicate content issues, which seems to be the big landmine.

Hi SEO-Bas! Just checking, is the issue resolved? I want to make sure you get the help you need, if not.

Hi Chris! I know how you must be feeling—trying to take on a competitor that is ranking very well can be daunting. But believe me, it can be done! Here are some suggestions to get your company ranking on page one AND outranking the competition: Local SEO - I know you know how information this is, but don't push this to the back burner. Get your local citations as tight and consistent as they can possibly be. Content - This is an obvious one, but continue creating new and unique content for your website! Make sure you are generating content that is helpful for users and proves that you are THE authority in the area. The more direct your responses, the more likely you are to rank—and maybe even land a Google direct answers spot! Videos - Google likes to display a wide variety of media in its search results—including videos. A video is 60 percent more likely to get ranked in a search result than a landing page on the same topic. Images - Optimizing the images on your site can help you get on the first page of Google when it displays image results. Microsites - A microsite (sometimes called a minisite) is a website used to supplement a company or organization’s primary domain. More often than not, the microsite will have a URL distinct of the primary domain and has its own unique design and navigation. Microsites can help you target different buyer personas, appear more relevant and authoritative, as well as get multiple listings in organic search results. News - Putting press releases out for your business can potentially score you a spot in the News section of Google, particularly for branded terms. We wrote a blog about getting your business on the first page of Google, so be sure to read that for more in depth information than I shared above! Let me know if you have any other questions—hope this helped!

Hello Sandi. I understand. It seems that my backlinks are fine. Thanks again.

That's true, they append parameters tracking where you came from, which looks like it can affect the navigation you're seeing on the left. They're making sure that Google doesn't get confused by using a canonical on their pages, like Mike, Eric and I have recommended.

Thank you for your response. It appears the best way to go about this is to make the main site amazing and optimize it around what they sell, correct? This is what I had in mind, but just wanted to check with the community to be sure.

Hello, Think about domains like wordpress.com, blogspot.com, ... Can Google let these domains be penalized because one or few subdomains have been penalized ? It can't.

Google has been fighting link spam and link schemes for a long time.  They have an entire team dedicated to rooting it out and penalizing it.   Lots of people have lost websites from doing exactly what you are talking about doing. The best approach is to build a great website.  If you build a website that does not engage visitors well and promote it with links Google will identify the behavior of your visitors as inferior and fail to move your site up in the rankings.   It is like lipstick on a pig.  Google will recognize it.

First and foremost, you want to avoid SEOs who don't understand Google's Webmaster Guidelines.   Now, that might sound like a stupid requirement because "doesn't every SEO understand the webmaster guidelines?"  Fact is, they don't and that is why huge numbers of websites are suffering from Panda, Penguin and other penalties.  In many cases their SEOs did that to them because they built spammy links, made spammy content, etc.  Hiring an SEO is like picking up a snake and hoping that it isn't a rattler.  Be careful and know your snakes and understand webmaster guidelines so you can look at the work that the SEO is doing for you and determining if it is going to get you into trouble. Next, there are lots of SEOs who will take on any job at any budget.  You might go to one of them unknowing the competitive level of your websites niche and tell the SEO that you have $5000 per month to spend.... and your niche is "digital cameras".   Your SEO needs to gauge the cost and methods of becoming competitive in that niche and bring your site into the money and earn a positive return sometime before your funeral.  Digital cameras?  Is that a $500 per month or a $5,000 per month or a $50,000 per month or a $500,000 per month attack?   If the SEO accepts you at $500 or $5000 per month then that SEO probably doesn't know what it is really going to take to become competitive in that niche, or he just cares about milking you for your money month after month and just stinging you along for as long as he can.   Here you have ignorant SEOs who will take your money and work for you not knowing that the amount you are paying isn't enough to fund a proper attack.  Then you have the ones you don't have the integrity or the courage to turn down paying work even if they know that the budget isn't enough to move the needle.  They just want your money.

Thanks for your opinion David.We use a dedicated solution based on Symphony framework but we migrate to Kohana currently - thats why we decided its good time to make changes in the SEO field as well.

Hi Logan - just had a proper look at all those domains and seems most of them are for US based businesses. Would you have a reference for anything on a global scale?

Thank you EGOL for your reply, Really Appreciate Your Help.

You said this: "Would disavow even be of any use though? I though that a disavow file had to be for the specific domain, so adding a disavow to all those links wouldn't do anything" When you disavow at the domain level, you also cover ALL the subdomains on that domain as well (even if they are deleted). So the best practice in this case, even if the domain isn't there anymore would be to just disavow those links. John Mueller clarified this in a Google+ thread back in 2014.

Well it's quite difficult to judge the quality of the content as I don't understand what is written on the page. What I did notice is that each time I clicked on a link a new tab which advertising (https://trafficnado.com...) was openend (without me requesting it) or that a pop-up was blocked. Google does consider this to be quite spammy techniques, so could be the cause why this page has suddenly disappeared from the results. Not sure about the content - seems you are streaming series. Are you the copyright holder for these ? If not, this could also be the reason why your site did disappear from the results (DMCA complaint) Dirk

Hi Radi, Syndicating content isn't always bad if it is done right, and Google is pretty good at getting this right anyway. They know that you can't stop someone copying your content. Have you checked to see if they are setting your pages as the canonical page? This is the way that syndication should work - ideally they would rel=canonical back to the page where the article resides on your site. If they don't, I would be asking them if they would mind doing that for you. You clearly don't mind good exposure, but I would call it a safeguard for both sites. -Andy

Why not add utm parameters (Google URL Builder tool) to the redirect URL? These will get passed over to the new domain and you can then take a look at the Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns report in Google Analytics.