HubPages, Squidoo and subdomains

[friendlymachine]

Just want to check my thinking on something. So, Google says subdomains stand on their own right? They don't get juice from the root domain. If this is true, the subdomains on a site like HubPages or WordPress.com are essentially a PR0 domain, right? Something like, mysub.hubpages.com.

But if you posted an article on Squidoo, a site that doesn't use subdomains, you should get some juice from the root domain passed to your post, right?

I usually go the guest blogging route, but I recently read a couple of posts on Web 2.0 link wheels swearing they are awesome, but most of the time the recommendation is to build it using what I perceive to be PR0 sites - Wordpress.com, Tumblr, HubPages subdomains. You would have to develop those sites so they have PR in order to pass juice.

Am I off base here or does building a link wheel in this way seem like a waste of time?

[Mcarle]

Panda has changed SEO.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-googles-panda-update-changed-seo-best-practices-forever-whiteboard-friday

http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-to-use-my-time-make-my-site-bigger-or-make-link-wheels

Link wheels in 2009 might have worked but no longer.

[friendlymachine]

Thanks for the reply. Maybe I didn't ask the question properly. I'm aware of Panda and its implications. I don't build link wheels. I'm trying to understand the rationale. So, I read a couple (recent) articles where folks were swearing by Web 2.0 sites for link building. So my question is really about the whole premise of using a site like HubPages as a source for backlinks.

If a subdomain that you just created on a site like that has PR0, what is the point? Why do so many people use those sites for backlinks, whether they are building a link wheel or not?

Hopefully that is more clear. I'm wondering if I'm missing something because I do not see the big advantage to doing that.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi John,

I'd say your basic assumption is correct. A subdomain on Wordpress.com, or any other 2.0 site, without any extra external links, is basically the same as starting a site from scratch on your own domain.

Blackhats once, and still do, like to use so-called 2.0 sites because

• they can build them up in bulk
• they can create a lot of accounts anonymously
• they can burn them easily when they are done.

Even then, they still must throw a ton of auto-generated, low quality links at these subdomains to get them to rank for anything. It's a common practice today, despite all the hard work involved. It's been going on for years, and I suppose some people still see it as "easy" - I view it as nothing but.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

[friendlymachine]

Thanks, Cyrus. This answers my question perfectly.

[Mcarle]

Why do people jaywalk in a busy intersection?

They want to get somewhere faster & are willing to take the risk of getting hit by a car because it "could never happen to them"

OR

They just don't know better, SEO is sort of this weird tiny little niche market that is not understood very well and to make matters worse, it changes every month...

I have had good friends who are very smart but had to have long arguments with them on SEO, They love giving me text links, but to my name only "because linking to my NAME" is the best thing. I have to explaine to them over and over again that a text link that describes my product "boudoir photography"   "pin up photography" is much better...So they go the extra mile and spend oodles of time and make me a super pretty graphic and link to me from a banner...

Same with PR0 linking essays & blog posts, they just don't know any better.

(what was a GREAT solution 5 years ago is now hurting rankings)

The funny thing about SEO in general is older sites still have higher rankings, so the OLD SEO advice in many cases is still at the top of SERPS. So every day people who are just learning read for days on how good linking from squidoo pages are...when in the past year it has taken a huge hit, same as paid blogs.... SEO is actually very harmful to the current relevant education of SEO....