Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
Do things like using labels on an element that is not a form input affect how google sees us in regards to accessibility?
Do things like using labels on an element that is not a form input affect how google sees us? It's an accessibility error that our devs have made - using a label element because it looks good, not because it's an actual label on a form field. Just wondering how that affects accessibility in Google's eyes.
Web Design | | GregLB0 -
How to prevent development website subdomain from being indexed?
Hello awesome MOZ Community! Our development team uses a sub-domain "dev.example.com" for our SEO clients' websites. This allows changes to be made to the dev site (U/X changes, forms testing, etc.) for client approval and testing. An embarrassing discovery was made. Naturally, when you run a "site:example.com" the "dev.example.com" is being indexed. We don't want our clients websites to get penalized or lose killer SERPs because of duplicate content. The solution that is being implemented is to edit the robots.txt file and block the dev site from being indexed by search engines. My questions is, does anyone in the MOZ Community disagree with this solution? Can you recommend another solution? Would you advise against using the sub-domain "dev." for live and ongoing development websites? Thanks!
Web Design | | SproutDigital0 -
Spanish website indexed in English, redirect to spanish or english version if i do a new website design?
Hi MOZ users, i have this problem. We have a website in Spanish Language but Google crawls it on English (it is not important the reasons). We re made the entire website and now we are planning the move. The new website will have different language versions, english, spanish and portuguese. Somebody tells me that we have to redirect the old urls (crawled on english) to the new english versions, not to the spanish (the real language of the firsts). Example: URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language English version. the other option will be redirect to the spanish new version, which the visitor is waiting to find. URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language Spanish version. What do you think? Which is the better option?
Web Design | | NachoRetta0 -
Duplicate Content Issue: Mobile vs. Desktop View
Setting aside my personal issue with Google's favoritism for Responsive websites, which I believe doesn't always provide the best user experience, I have a question regarding duplicate content... I created a section of a Wordpress web page (using Visual Composer) that shows differently on mobile than it does on desktop view. This section has the same content for both views, but is formatted differently to give a better user experience on mobile devices. I did this by creating two different text elements, formatted differently, but containing the same content. The problem is that both sections appear in the source code of the page. According to Google, does that mean I have duplicate content on this page?
Web Design | | Dino640 -
Multiple websites for different service areas/business functions?
I'm wondering what the implications are for having multiple domains for different service areas of a company? I realize having multiple domains for one company can be troublesome because of the possibility of duplicate content, keyword cannibalization, and linkbuilding to multiple domains. But when the domains are for very different service offerings/unique business functions that each serve their own purpose (and have different positionings), is there a downside to having more than one domain? Any thoughts would be appreciated!
Web Design | | KevinBloom0 -
Google also indexed trailing slash version - PLEASE HELP
Hi Guys, We redesigned the website and somehow our canonical extension decided to add a trailing slash to all URLs. Previously our canonical URLs didn't have a trailing slash. During the redesign we haven't changed the URLs. They remained same but we have now two versions indexed. One with trailing slash one without. I've now fixed the issue and removed the the trailing slash from canonical URLs. Is this the correct way of fixing it? Will our rankings be effected in a negative way? Is there anything else I need to do. The website went live last Tuesday. Thanks
Web Design | | Jvalops0 -
URLs with Hashtags - Does Google Index Them?
Hi there, I have a potential issue with a site whereby all pages are dynamically populated using Javascript. Thus, an example of an URL on their site would be www.example.com/#!/category/product. I have read lots of conflicting information on the web - some says Google will ignore everything after the hashtag; other people say that Google will now index everything after the hashtag. Does anybody have any conclusive information about this? Any links to Google or Matt Cutts as confirmation would be brilliant. P.S. I am aware about the potential issue of duplicate content, but I can assure you that has been dealt with. I am only concerned about whether Google will index full URLs that contain hashtags. Thanks all! Mark
Web Design | | markadoi840 -
Recommended Website Monitoring Tools
Hi, I was wondering what people would recommend for website monitoring (IE is my website working as it should!). I need something that will:
Web Design | | James77
1/. Allow multiple page monitoring not just homepage
2/. Do header status checking
3/. Do page content checking (ie if the page changes massively, or include the word "error") then we have an issue!
4/. Multiple alert possibilities. We currently use www.websitepulse.com and it is a good service that does all the above, however it just seems so overly complex that its hard to understand what is going on, and its complex functionality and features are really a negative in our case. Thanks0