Optimiing multiple sites of a similar nature

[aplnzoctober18]

I work for a company that makes products for the construction sector, we have approximately 80 independent companies who solely sell our products.  We are looking to create websites for each of them (some have pre-existing sites that will be redesigned) They will be reasonably basic with quite few having a single page and none requiring online selling. I’m mindful that we will be essentially optimizing them all for the same words phrases. Is there anything I need to be mindful of when undertaking a project. Is it ok to optimize for the same keys words and  terms etc?

[RuthBurrReedy]

It's going to be difficult for a single-page website to do much in the way of organic traffic. You're correct that optimizing 80 sites for the same keywords and phrases isn't going to be very effective; these sites will likely be seen as duplicates of each other, especially if they share the same design and much of the same content. Even if Google doesn't de-index some of their pages for being duplicates, you will still be creating 80 websites that are all competing with each other for the same phrases, which will make it harder for any of them to rank.

What makes these 80 companies different from each other? Why would someone choose one one over the other? If they're local businesses, I'd lean heavily into local SEO for this - using MozLocal to make sure each company's local citations are claimed, filled out, correct, and consistent; and making sure that each company's name, address, and phone number are prominent on the site itself.