Does Google penalize duplicate website design?

[Tiberiu]

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

[TomRayner]

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!

[Chris.Menke]

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.

[irvingw]

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.

[Tiberiu]

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

[Chris.Menke]

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?

[Tiberiu]

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

[Chris.Menke]

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.

[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