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You might be able to get some highly relevant referral traffic from forums, so forum links aren't completely useless. But as Logan and Martijn said, if you are doing this type of link building purely for SEO reasons, then your time is definitely better spent elsewhere. Cheers, David

Good tip, Sean! I wouldn't say that content on the homepage will completely resolve David's question, but it will certainly help! David's scenario is one that every multi-practitioner or multi-location local business has to grapple with: how to ensure that a set of pages that basically share a topic are uniquely useful, as well as optimized. It takes some doing!

Basically, your is diluting its own efforts and resources, the idea to publish content in other domain make sense if it applied in the right way. (this not the case). 1- There is no make sense to have the same content in 2 places, so let see what Google has to say about it. Duplicate content Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you'd prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the no index meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content. Minimize similar content: If you have many pages that are similar, consider expanding each page or consolidating the pages into one. For instance, if you have a travel site with separate pages for two cities, but the same information on both pages, you could either merge the pages into one page about both cities or you could expand each page to contain unique content about each city. Let's take an example assume that your client has an article called 3 Tips About legal requirements to buy a home You Can't Afford To Miss ----> The keyword on this case is_ legal requirements to buy a home._ So boost your SEO efforts is to build other articles on other pages around this content, if you made a quick content research about the topic _legal requirements to buy a home. _ Let's take an example assume that your client has an article called 3 Tips About legal requirements to buy a home You Can't Afford To Miss ----> The keyword on this case is legal requirements to buy a home. how much do you need to buy a house KD=4 Volume=600 the best state to buy a house KD=10 Volume=350 what to do after buying a house KD=4 Volume=350 So the best way to boost your content strategy and your Search Ranking is to create a universe around your content where the center of that universe is your article ( hahaha this just a Marvel joke), Also do not forget to include an internal link strategy and site structure strategy Regards Hope this info will help you

You could actually just use the disavow tool and target those toxic links. Google will then ignore them and as long as you have redirected the site properly, you should be good to go. However, it is also worth making a decision on how important the domain is to your over all strategy and if it seriously brings something to the table. If it is not going to make that much of an impact, then you should just get rid of it and move on.

Thank you, Jack for your response! This we did not know...

Thanks Martijn, we'll look into the blog post and implement. dave

Hi David, Is it necessary to redirect ALL old URLs_**? **_ No. The old URLs will continue to show up in search results for some time. Your global redirect will make sure visitors and link juice gets appropriately routed, but you do want those URLs to eventually get dropped from the index. The best way to encourage search engines to do that is to not create a specific redirect.

Great news, glad you could solve it, thanks for the update David

Sorry for the late reaction to this response. Thank you so much, Nigel. We'll bear your comment in mind as we update this site's folder and file structure!

Good luck with the meeting and the project

Hi David! Interesting topic! I'd like to show you something here on Moz that might help hash this out bit more. This our our recommended companies list: https://moz.com/rand/recommended-list-seo-consultants/ This section of our site (which resides on the main domain, not a subdomain) helps people find various types of marketers they need for different services. I don't believe it has earned a ton of links; it's just a pretty straightforward resource for the marketing community that many companies feel proud to be included on. So, that's one approach - if you feel your customers would benefit from knowing of other digital service providers you trust in your city, then build the resource on your own website for the sake of usefulness, and maybe you'll earn a few links to it. Better, maybe some networking opportunities would arise for you for real-world work with related agencies in your city. The alternative I see would be to start a completely separate business - a directory - on its own domain. Depending on the size of your city and the number of companies offering these types of services in that city, management could be a minor effort or become a full time job. I've never build a directory, but I did curate one back in the good 'ol days once and it was a big hassle, so my view of this is a bit biased, based on that experience. That was back when you could plonk a bunch of Adsense on something like a directory and earn a bit of money. The challenge today would be how your business would directly benefit from undertaking this second path of running a free-standing directory. I'm no authority when it comes to directories. Yes, many have been devalued over the years, but local ones can still be useful in markets that aren't too saturated. The question mark for me in this scenario would be whether you would see some form of ROI for the effort. Hope these thoughts are helpful!