Subdirectory penalized?!

[NicoNico]

Hi, i have a WordPress multisite with sub-directory structure.
i notice one site of this "network" doesn't rank well it has around 1000 posts but only about 50 perform (1st page of Google) some are on page 2-5 and the rest are nowhere to be found.

However on the other 2 sites of this network on different subdirectories don't have this problem. (All posts get considered for page 1-2 when searching the post title).

I run this test to make sure the subdirectory played a role:

i created a new site on my WordPress network, i copied and pasted one article from the directory that seems penalized to the new site (same domain, different sub-directory).
I submitted the new URL to Google and when searching the post title...it's on page 1! it has been on page 1 for 2 days now.
The same post on the old subdirectory did not appear on search results at all (even though it is indexed, it just doesn't rank).

So now i'm waiting to see if this post rank "sticks" on page one. If this is the case my plan is to go ahead and rename the "penalized" site subdirectory to something else, and 301 redirect only the posts that performed well with the old subdirectory and let the rest 404, submit an xml sitemap and let google index the new urls.

What do you think of this? Good idea? Bad idea? My test really got me thinking...

[aakk9999]

Hello NicoNico and welcome to WebmasterWorld!

So if I understood well, Wordpress multisite network uses the same domain within which there are folders for each of wordpress "sites" and articles that get posted in one of these folders do not rank well, but when you moved one article to a new folder (that is used for a new "site"), the ranking greatly improved. It also appears that you now have two copies of the same article, one in the folder whose articles do not rank well and the other in the different folder where you copied it.

Before doing anything else, I would wait a little bit longer to see if the article rank remains. I would also experiment further to determine:

- would article remain to rank if the original article that you copied the content from returns 410 Gone?
- would article remain to rank if you 301 the original article to the new copy? (Do not forget that if penalised, you could transfer penalty this way.)

I would perhaps copy two more articles to this new "site" folder, and then:

- on the original site, leave as is the one you already copied (whose copy now ranks well), do not change anything on the original site for this article

- copy the second article to this new site, and then set up the original article to return 410 Gone

- copy the third article to this new site and then set up the original article to 301 redirect to a new copy

Monitor progress of all three. I would give it two-three weeks at least and I would also monitor whether Googlebot has picked up 404 and 301 from your logs

Do not forget that initially articles/sites may rank well until Google folds in additional signals, at which point ranking may drop (and even drop a lot).

I would then decide what to do based on the results of this test.