Does Google penalize duplicate website design?
-
Hello,
We are very close to launching five new websites, all in the same business sector. Because we would like to keep our brand intact, we are looking to use the same design on all five websites. My question is, will Google penalize the sites if they have the same design?
Thank you!
Best regards,
Tiberiu -
To tell you the truth we are already ranking with our main domain for some of the keywords we are after but we're just trying to speeding things up a bit. We've tried the strategy with exact match domains before for some different keywords and, after just 1 week and like 60 listings in different local business directories, the domains ranked for the exact match keyword somewhere between position 3 and 7. The designs were different though.
As long as we don't have to invest more than the actual domain price and we get about 20 bookings per month for each domain, it still counts as profit.
Well, thank you very much once again for your answer. Your oppinions have been more than helpful for me.
Best regards,
Tiberiu
-
Often you're better off ,putting your efforts into a single domain and getting that to rank, rather than splitting your efforts between all those other domains--I mean, what are you going to do with those new sites that is going to get them to rank that you couldn't do with your original domain? If they're exact match domains, I wouldn't count on their effectiveness for the long term--or even for the short term.
-
Hello!
We already have a main website which ranks well for some of the keywords, and not so well for others. The new websites are targeted on the keywords that don't rank so well.
I forgot to specify that we have separate offices for each of the new websites. The websites are already registered with TPH(Taxi and Private Hire) as branches of the main business.
Thank you!
Tiberiu
-
Do you already have a main site that is ranking for all the main keywords and you're just about to roll out these five new ones or are these five new sites your first ones and your business plan revolves around those five?
-
Good morning and thank you all for your answers!
As to respond all questions, we are launching the websites to have more keyword targeted domains. The main business area of the company I work for is "airport transfers". As London has five main airports we have created an website for each of them. We will not be doing any link crossing between the fivem while the content on each of them is different. On the other hand they will be hosted on the same server and will probably have the same contact info.
One tactic I had in mind in order to dodge any possible penalty for duplicate website design was to talk to my developer and ask him to specifically rename the files he will use for architecture of the sites so they are named different for each website in particular. But that is a pretty time consuming task.
If you have any more suggestions I`ll be more than happy to hear them.
Thank you once again!
Best regards,
Tiberiu
-
Bad idea to launch 5 sites for the same company addressing the same targets. One site representing your company (if same product) is the rule.
If you can use different IPs, private domain registrars, no interlinking, different contact info, and different content you can get away with it. If you're just throwing up 5 sites on the same server with similar info you're asking for trouble.
-
Think of the gazillion Wordpress sites out there--they're all the same architecture and they can rank. Your tactic used to be more prevalent, back when linking between sites (you won't be doing that, will you?) with thin content (they won't have that, will they?) helped lift all of them in the rankings.
While there are plenty of examples of multiple sites owned by the same company showing up in the same page-one search results, there are as many, or more, examples of them all showing up at the bottom of the results. It seems to me that if you're asking the question you're asking --at this point in the project, you may not be well enough informed to keep yourself out of the later group. I'd kindly recommend doing some additional homework before you launch.
-
Hi Tiberiu
No, a site won't be penalised because it has the same site structure, design or architecture as another site. For example, I've worked with a number of companies that have multiple websites for different countries. To establish brand consistency and awareness, the designs are all kept the same.
Of course, your website might get penalised if it contains duplicate content, so obviously it's important to ensure all your content is unique before launching. Google may also look negatively on your site if it contains a lot of ads above the fold, or tries to use ad-space too aggressively, so be wary of this.
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
A campaign ghost keeps returning to my Google Analytics - Help!
A couple of campaign tracking links were created on my homepage (leading to internal pages), these were removed a few weeks ago (100% removed from the site). I understand there is a 6 month window and as long as a user returns (no matter from which source) they will be counted as a session against that campaign. Since these campaign links were set-up in error, I hoped creating a fresh new view within Google Analytics would stop them appearing. However they are still showing as sessions even in the new view (created after removing the campaign links in question). Is there anyway to stop this happening!? I want to be able to report on sessions correctly. Thanks, Sam
Web Design | | Sam.at.Moz0 -
Is it okay to design different mobile site for different browsers
Hi, Is it okay to design different mobile site for different browsers on same url. The content of the site will also be different on different browsers. Will it be treated as black hat by Google. The mobile site & desktop site has same url across devices & browsers. Regards
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
Free websites that are good with SEO?
Dear members, I am looking for a free/ almost free website which is good for SEO. For example i am looking at WIX right now but i keeping reading that they aren't optimal for SEO. Does anybody has some tips which website is can use, example weebly, strato, etc?? Many thanks!
Web Design | | rijwielcashencarry0400 -
Should i not use hyphens in web page titles? Google Penalty for hyphens?
all the page titles in my site have hyphens between the words like this: http://texas.com/texas-plumbers.html I have seen tests where hyphenated domain names ranked lower than non hyphenated domain names. Does this mean my pages are being penalized for hyphens or is this only in the domain that it is penalized? If I create new pages should I not use hyphens in the page titles when there are two or more words in the title? If I changed all my page titles to eliminate the hyphens, I would lose all my rankings correct? My site is 12 years old and if I changed all these titles I'm guessing that each page would be thrown in the google sandbox for several months, is this true? Thanks mozzers!
Web Design | | Ron100 -
Metro style design for a new eCommerce Platform: will it survive?
Hello, While developing eCommerce solution for building webstores in WordPress, our team decided to use metro style design for our dashboard. Could you check the Dashboard screenshot please and discuss several questions with me: How do you think, is it a good idea to use this kind of style? Do you think if there are many people who hate it?:) Should we offer more dashboard designs that can be changed through admin area (may be to offer a standard WP design) or this style will be enough for the start? Thank you very much! Yaros, GosuSell 001_dashboard.jpg
Web Design | | GosuSell0 -
How would restructuring the navigation of my website affect my rankings?
I want to restructure the navigation of my website for a few reasons: 1. It isn't intuitive/clear to the user 2. It is way too big, it has too many links and thus causes the number of links on many pages to be >100. 3. I want to get rid of file extensions as part of the URLs (.html, .php) 4. I want to achieve a "tree"-like navigation system, with categories, subcategories and so on. In the process of cleaning up my website, I had to 301 redirect a lot of duplicate pages, fix broken links, etc. I have a lot of 301 redirects already, and in the process of restructuring the navigation of my website I know I'm going to get more. Will the addition of new 301 redirects have an effect on my rankings? (I'm basically going to be changing all of the URLs) What kind of SEO effect will restructuring the navigation at the top of the page (reducing the # of links on the main menu) have on my site? What is the best strategy to implement in this situation?
Web Design | | deuce1s0 -
Where to find high quality (affordable) web designers?
Hi everyone, I am looking for find high quality web designers that are affordable. I am open to many options. There are several things I have looked into. 1. I have looked for designers via CSS galleries, but I don't really know how to get in touch with designers or find them. Rand recently talked about this in a webinar, but if anyone has specific insights on how to find people this way, please let me know. 2. I have also looked into website design contests from sites such as: DesignCrowd.com 99designs.com CrowdSpring.com DesignContest.com I haven't used these services and I was wondering if anyone has experience with design contests. 3. I have looked into the option of hiring a freelancer on oDesk or a similar freelancer site. I don't really know the cost, how to find a good designer, how to avoid inexperienced but cheap designers and all the other such roadblocks that come along with freelancers. If anyone could provide insight into this, it would be greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | alexhoug0 -
The primary search keywords for our news release network have dropped like a rock in Google... we are not sure why.
Hi, On April 11th, a month after the farmer update was released for U.S. users of Google, the primary keywords for ALL our sites significantly dropped in Google. I have some ideas why, but I wanted to get some second opinions also. First off, I did some research if Google did anything on the 11th of April... they did. They implemented the farmer update internationally, but that does not explain why our ranks did not drop in March for U.S. Google users... unless they rolled out their update based on what site the domain is registered in... in our case, Canada. The primary news release site is www.hotelnewsresource.com, but we have many running on the same server. EG. www.restaurantnewsresource.com, www.travelindustrywire.com and many more. We were number 1 or had top ranks for terms like ¨Hotel News¨, ¨Hotel Industry¨, ¨Hotel Financing¨, ¨Hotel Jobs¨, ¨Hotels for Sale¨, etc... and now, for most of these we have dropped in a big way. It seems that Google has issued a penalty for every internal page we link to. Couple obvious issues with the current template we use... too many links, and we intend to change that asap, but it has never been a problem before. The domain hotelnewsresource.com is 10 years old and still holds a page rank of 6. Secondly, the way our news system works, it´s possible to access an article from any domain in the network. E.G. I can read an article that was assigned to www.hotelnewsresource.com on www.restaurantnewsresource.com... we don´t post links to the irrelevant domain, but it does sometimes get indexed. So, we are going to implement the Google source meta tag option. The bottom line is that I think we put too much faith in the maturity of the domain... thinking that may protect us... not the case and it´s now a big mess. Any insight you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Do you think it was farmer or possibly something else? Thanks, Jarrett
Web Design | | jarrett.mackay0