Moderate Domain Interlinking/301ing - Possible Spam Flag?

[triggerfinger]

All,

Imagine a site, "Widget Website Services", located at WidgetWebsiteServices.Example.com.

One of this company's services is to create and host Websites for Widget companies. Many pages are hosted on sub-domains of Example.com. (BlueWidgetCompany.Example.com)

Many others are also hosted on a secondary domain, i.e. RedWidgetCompany.SecondaryDomain.***)

All hosted webpages on both sites link back to the first site, WidgetWebsiteServices.Example.com.

Question:

Does 301'ing the WWW sub-domain of the SecondaryDomain back to the WidgetWebsiteServices.Example.com present the possibility of tripping a Spam Algo.

I hope this was clear enough for understand, thanks in advance for your help.

[tedster]

I don't see any reason why this 301 redirect, on its own, would trigger a spam flag. Now if you continue to promote and get links to the secondary domain's root even after it is redirecting, that might be a problem.

[triggerfinger]

Actually, I forgot to mention that many pages link to the www.SecondaryDomain.com. They are using it as one in the same with the primary domain.
Would it help that all the links go to www, but all the pages are hosted on other subdomains?
There haven't been any reports of de-indexation, but how would a spam penalty show up?

[triggerfinger]

Most of the links (more then 80%) to the secondary domain come from other independent domains.

[tedster]

If you 301 redirect, then that should stop future links.

[triggerfinger]

we 301 www.secondarydomain.*** to widgetwebsiteservices.example.com
Many client websites point to both of these.
There is the potential that sites hosted on subdomains of each of these link to each of these, with no specific rhyme or reason (it was a sloppy implementation).

What exactly do you mean by "stop future links"?

[tedster]

The only chance I see of a spam penalty (and this is a slim chance) is if significant new backlnks continue to appear that point the secondary domain, even after it is redirecting. Since the secondary domain will no longer appear in the browser's location bar, I assume that almost all your new natural backlinks will point to the main domain.

So, if you are also arranging new backlinks through any kind of program, only arrange them to point to the main domain.