"Original Content" Dynamic Hurting SEO? -- Strategies for Differentiating Template Websites for a Nationwide Local Business Segment?

[localizedseo]

The Problem I have a stable of clients spread around the U.S. in the maid service/cleaning industry -- each client is a franchisee, however their business is truly 'local' with a local service area, local phone/address, unique business name, and virtually complete control over their web presence (URL, site design, content; apart from a few branding guidelines).

Over time I've developed a website template with a high lead conversion rate, and I've rolled this website out to 3 or 4 dozen clients.  Each client has exclusivity in their region/metro area.

Lately my white hat back linking strategies have not been yielding the results they were one year ago, including legitimate directories, customer blogging (as compelling as maid service/cleaning blogs can really be!), and some article writing.  This is expected, or at least reflected in articles on SEO trends and directory/article strategies.

I am writing this question because I see sites with seemingly much weaker back link profiles outranking my clients (using SEOMoz toolbar and Site Explorer stats, and factoring in general quality vs. quantity dynamics).

Questions Assuming general on-page optimization and linking factors are equal:

• Might my clients be suffering because they're using my oft-repeated template website (albeit with some unique 'content' variables)?

If I choose to differentiate each client's website, how much differentiation makes sense? Specifically:

• Even if primary content (copy, essentially) is differentiated, will Google still interpret the matching code structure as 'the same website'?

• Are images as important as copy in differentiating content?

• From an 'machine' or algorithm perspective evaluating unique content, I wonder if strategies will be effective such as saving the images in a different format, or altering them slightly in Photoshop, or using unique CSS selectors or slightly different table structures for each site (differentiating the code)?

Considerations My understanding of Google's "duplicate content " dynamics is that they mainly apply to de-duping search results at a query specific level, and choosing which result to show from a pool of duplicate results.  My clients' search terms most often contain client-specific city and state names.

Despite the "original content" mantra, I believe my clients being local businesses who have opted to use a template website (an economical choice), still represent legitimate and relevant matches for their target user searches -- it is in this spirit I ask these questions, not to 'game' Google with malicious intent.

In an ideal world my clients would all have their own unique website developed, but these are Main St business owners balancing solutions with economics and I'm trying to provide them with scalable solutions.

Thank You! I am new to this community, thank you for any thoughts, discussion and comments!

[AlanBleiweiss]

so since you're doing what are all the right things generally, then I'd recommend looking at what the inbound link quality/volume/diversity is for various sites you have compared to their individual market competitors.  Beyond that it would need to be a case by case evaluation to better nail down issues/problems.

On a final note, social's become a big signal and should be highly encouraged as well... (twitter engagement for example), though I know it's a challenge in that type of market.

[localizedseo]

Hi Alan,

The template site  is fairly basic static html, address/contact info is repeated on every page in an 'About Us' sidebar box and prominent phone numbers throughout, also a 'Service Area' table that lists cities is on every page.  The site in total is about 27 html pages at average ~25KB a page.

We could definitely differentiate the image alt tags further.

Geographic information is included in title tags for home page and all service-offered related pages, but not in title tags for pages like 'privacy policy.'

Google Places, Yelp, Yahoo/Bing Local etc. are all in place.

Thank you for your feedback!

[AlanBleiweiss]

When you ask about the templatized repetitiveness, I need to wonder how much code exists underneath the visible content.  If there is an overwhelming ratio of code to on-page content, this can, by itself, negatively impact a site's uniqueness if there are dozens, hundreds, or thousands of identical templates, however it should be a minor concern if there's enough unique content specific to geo-location and individual site owner.

So for example, is geographic information included in every page title and within every page's content?  Are site owners able to include their own unique image alternate attribute text?  Is their address and contact info on every page?  Do they have their own Google Place pages (properly optimized, and pointing back to their site's contact page?  Or do they even also have Yelp, CitySearch, Bing Local or Yahoo local listings similarly set up?

All of these can help.

As far as the template repetition, if the rest of the above is all properly utilized, it shouldn't be a major problem, so I'd start looking at those considerations and go from there.