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Dec

I Am Heading Out To PubCon

Posted by Dave Dugdale  Published in SEO

I am leaving to Vegas for PubCon soon. If anyone is out there and wants to meet up for a beer drop me an email. I will be wearing my RentVine shirts so you can spot me.

I am pretty sure I will do a write up on the conference when I get back.

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10 users responded in this post

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Robbie said in December 4th, 2007 at 10:26 am

Have fun Dave!
wish I could go :(

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Dave Dugdale said in December 4th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

I had a good flight in. good sessions so far.

althoght the session I am in now the guy is reading from his slides which is not cool.

perhaps I will write a review when I get back.

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ReadingFromSlideGuy said in December 5th, 2007 at 1:53 am

How else does one make a profit from presenting unless one makes one generic presentation and keeps reading it over and over at different events.

And I have a top tip: Remember to stuff your meta keyword tags, they are so essential to SEO these days.

Oh wait, should have updated my presentation from 2000….

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Dave Dugdale said in December 5th, 2007 at 7:14 am

Readingfromslideguy,

It sounds like you are in Vegas at Pubcon since you know of the meta story from last years Pubcon. I would really like to meet up with you and have a beer. Let me know how to contact you.

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Robbie said in December 8th, 2007 at 3:44 pm

Dave,
I’m sure you are aware of the statement Matt Cutts from Google said at PubCon that Google will be treating sub domains similar to how they treat folders on a site?

If this is true…..How do you think this rule will effect rental websites?

Every “major” player uses then.
Rentvine.com
Rentals.com
Rentalhouses.com

Well, You get the idea. I would like to hear more about this.
The original blog i say it at is here:
http://searchengineland.com/071207-090257.php

Have Fun!
Robbie

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Dave Dugdale said in December 8th, 2007 at 4:51 pm

Timely question Robbie,

As of last night RentVine does not use subdomains any longer. I made that change right after I got back from the conference.

I got to talk to some Google engineers about this issue and finally made the hard decision to redirect my subdomain pages. I believe I will see a hit in traffic in about 2 weeks from both Google and Yahoo. :(

One of the Google engineers I talked to (at Matt Cutts level) said to avoid multiple doorway pages created just for Google or creating subdomains for only one page. I told him that a lot of sites in my industry use this approach and he asked me for a list of sites that did this, but I decided not to until I clean up my site first.

The list of subdomain users in this industry is long:

  • RentalHomesPlus.com (I saw the Cars.com SEO at the conference)
  • Apartments.com
  • Sublet.com
  • House.info (excessive subdomain spam!)
  • ApartmentGuide.com
  • CityLeases.com

and many more…

Sounds like the subdomain power-play is coming to an end.

I have decided to go the safe route, rather than getting hit with a penalty or filter in the future.

Robbie in your list above I am pretty sure RentalHouses.com is not doing this - however they are buying links from sites like usacitiesonline.com wich might get them thrown in the Google jail one of these days.

Even though I know I am going to get hit with less traffic in a few weeks it actually feels good to be totally spam free now.

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PubCon 2007 Review said in December 8th, 2007 at 5:24 pm

[...] I got to talk with Brian White after the site review session and asked him about the site subdomain issue in my industry - you can read more in my comments here. [...]

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Robbie said in December 8th, 2007 at 8:53 pm

Welcome back Dave!
My life has been boring since you have been gone.

I have a few different opinions about subdomains :)
I have seen house.info fall “HARD” in my market and RHP gain a little position in Google And Yahoo….They are still two or three pages deep (Yikes!)

I think this is a “BIG” deal for our market! We will see how this plays out in the serps!

Glad to see your back and hope you did not learn enough to kick my butt in SEO for my market! (J/K)

Robbie

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Dave Dugdale said in December 8th, 2007 at 10:23 pm

One of the reasons that RHP is rising is they have created subdomains recently. I don’t think Google is going to take action right away it will be a slow process, but I would rather play it on the safe side.

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RentVine Takes The Number 5 Spot In Traffic said in December 9th, 2007 at 9:18 am

[...] Unfortunately, I except to see my traffic fall next month because I redirected all my subdomains after 3 years of use. He is what I wrote in reply to Robbie’s comment: [...]