Can I disallow my subdomain for penguin recover?

[CommercePundit]

Hi,

I have a site like BannerBuzz.com, before last penguin my site's all keywords were in good position in google, but after penguin hit on my website, my all keywords are going down and down day by day, i have done some changes in my website for improvement, but in 1 change i have some confusion.

i have one sub domain (http://reviews.bannerbuzz.com/), which display my websites all keywords user reviews, in which every category's 15 reviews are display in my website http://www.bannerbuzz.com so are those user reviews consider as duplicate content between sub domain and main website.

can i disallow sub domain from all search engine? currently sub domain is open for all search engine, is that helpful to block it?

Thanks

[Devanur-Rafi]

Hi there,

Here are my two cents in this regard. Instead of showing 10 or 15 reviews on the root domain, show no more than 2 and for more reviews you can send the visitors to the reviews sub-domain (using a 'view more reviews' button as you currently have). This will mitigate duplicate content issues to a great extent if at all any. I do not recommend blocking the sub-domain from the search engines. However, you can move the content of the sub-domain to something like a reviews sub-folder as follows:

bannerbuzz.com/reviews

From an SEO stand point, sub-folder is a safe bet compared to a sub-domain. Here is what Rand Fishkin has to say in this regard (http://www.seomoz.org/q/subdomains-vs-subfolders

_ “All the testing, research and examples I've seen in the past few years (and even the past few months) strongly suggest that the same principles still hold true._

Subdomains SOMETIMES inherit and pass link/trust/quality/ranking metrics between one another.

Subfolders ALWAYS inherit and pass link/trust/quality/ranking metrics across the same subdomain.

Thus, having a single subdomain (even just domainname.tld with no subdomain extension) with all of your content is absolutely ideal from an SEO perspective. It's also more usable and brandable, too IMO.”

Here is an interesting discussion about the same here on Moz.com:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/multiple-subdomains-my-worst-seo-mistake-now-what-should-i-do

Hope these help.

Best regards,

Devanur Rafi.

[CommercePundit]

Thanks Devanur Rafi, for your information

You gave us really great information, but i have one question, currently i am using 3rd party reviews services fro customer's users (powerreviews.com), so is it possible to make sub folder and redirect sub-domain to sub-folder?

[Devanur-Rafi]

No problem my friend. You are most welcome.

So if you are using 3rd party services to fill in the reviews content on the sub-domain, you can the following:

1. Stop using the sub-domain henceforth for the reviews content and use the new reviews sub-folder to get the reviews content filled in.

2. Redirect the old reviews content on the sub-domain to the new reviews sub-folder via 301.

This will make sure that you don't loose the SEO goodies that the sub-domain has acquired till date and also all (almost all) of those goodies will be passed on to the new sub-folder.

Please feel free to post any or all of your queries if you have any in this regard.

Best regards,

Devanur Rafi.

[CommercePundit]

Hello Rafi,

I am going to make necessary changes on it. And, I have started work to gather backlinks on home page with Vinyl Banners keyword from various sources. It may help me to recover my old ranking!