Duplicate exact match domains flagged by google - need help reinclusion

[VisualSense]

There's no need to worry about the templates... But your content sounds 99% dupe across all of your 270+ sites. I'd start with rewriting the pages for your best converting sites and take it one by one from there. Not sure if this is in fact a manual penalty, are your URLs still apearing in the SERPS when you search for them?

[dmac]

Google hates duplicate content, so much so that you will have problems with two urls, let alone 270 of them. Don't bother trying anything funny, like spinning the articles, at least for now. When you submit your site for re-inclusion it will be examined by humans, not robots. You need to have a good story and a nice clean site if you want to get back into the game. Being that your sites are 98 percent duplicate content, that really means you have only one, maybe two, websites at best. I would make 301 redirects from all your other websites to your best performing website. This will show google that you have solved your duplicate content problems while keeping all the links from the other sites. Good luck! dmac

[DGSEO]

Rishi -

Can you recommend a good resource that supports point number 2?  I'd love to learn more about what they are actually doing to downgrade exact match domains.

Thanks

[rishil]

They have been attacked time and time again - its not happened yet, and MC keeps saying they are looking at it. Quite a few took a bump when I put that comment out, but weeks later most were back in the index.

[Syed1]

Recommend the 2 points you mentioned. Of course, followed with a dose of good old backlinks and backed by some social signals as well.  Yes its more work but it will you see better ROI in the long run.

Also, echoing other users here, template is not an issue at all - its what you put on it - the content, titles and other meta tags that needs to be unique especially if you are a low-mid level authority. Very high level authority sites can get away with duplicate content as Google sometimes tends to blindly trust them over the original source.

[danrawk]

i would consider adding social features such as seo-able comments/forums/disqus etc. to help build each sites "local"ness in kw's. get each site as far away from the "template" mindset as you can.

in terms of "templates" keep in mind that google is not looking at template code for the most part. they're looking at the content (stuff in text) on your site and it's relevance.

i'd also consider shelving 260 of those domains, and making 10 really great sites.

best of luck!

[Svetoslav]

A while ago a business manager I work with purchased 30 exact match domains, willing to use them for "SEO purposes". I actually poked around for ideas here too. At the end I decided I can't use them at all and got them redirected. The advice I got here was to focus my effort on the main site. What I plan to use them for at this point is AdWords. I will try to boost the CTR. If that does nto work, I'm 301 tem to the main site again.

My plan is to grab the domains, put a canonical link element on the whole domain, since it will duplicate the main site. Since AdWords URLs tend to get pasted into forum threads, blog post and social networks, I'm kind of hoping for a collateral effect in terms of backlinks.

Even if you have your sites reincluded, there is no guarantee that they won't go down again pretty soon. This seems a short term strategy anyway. Get the good URLs redirected to you main site and focus your effort there.

[davidangotti]

You may have already seen this article from a few weeks back, but it is closely related to what you are thinking about doing with the domains:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2086693/Exact-Match-Domains-Can-Double-Clicks-on-PPC-Ads

Good luck!

[Svetoslav]

No, I haven't. Thanks for sharing, David! I guess I'm doing it first thing tomorrow.

[Netboost]

it is time for you to spin your content and try and make the sites distinct from each other. Try it then ping the sites. If nothing changes after a month you will have to write a love letter to google.

[NickEubanks]

IMHO this is absolutely a content issue - opposed to spinning the content my suggestion would be to spent a little bit of $$ on having unique articles written targeting your top-level head and body keywords on each domain. You can get unique articles created for as little as $3 each using Odesk, Guru, or similar services - at this point I think spinning the content is not a great approach as Google has already recorded that these sites contain duplicate content and have been flagged as such, spent the money on some real content, re-work your post and page titles to reflect the new unique content, re-generate your sitemaps to include the new unique titles, and then re-submit

[caneja]

Are all of the domains being hosted under the same IP or have the same WHOIS info?  If so then I suggest you use different hosting providers (hence difference IP's) and change up the whois info for each of the domains (you can even use private).

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Ilya,

It's been a few months since your original question. Are you still looking for some advice regarding this? Or do you have something you could share with us about what you did and let us know what we should do or not do if we're in a similar situation?

Thanks!

[DanLaBate]

Google beat up real estate sites for the same reason.  City + homes for sale type sites where all that changed was the city, especially where the sites would create mini fact pages for each city to try and pull rank for that area keyword search.

Too many sites have used this technique and the market is saturated with such low quality sites.  Niche directories focusing on one city are better, but you need to watch the boiler plate content and also the listings you have need to contribute more to the conversation that just name, address telephone like the yellow pages.

I doubt that Google is penalizing you for using the sale template, as mentioned so many sites use WordPress themes where the code structure is identical, and they are doing fine. I am curious if you are interlinking the websites.

Good content, usefulness and fresh contributions to the site will always be a good recipe.  Fix and request re-inclusion and your shouldn't have a problem.

[Thos003]

Guilty!... and it takes one to know one.

You may have little chance of redeeming those sites. 301 redirects seem to wipe the crap clean. So you get the traffic and some of the link juice.

Or...

Pass the website on. Give it to someone else... Change the registration.

..... As an added note, I once heard Matt Cutts say, "Why would you want to buy one of these (burned) sites? Why wouldn't you start over with a new site? Then at least you are at ground zero instead of in a hole."

[nyanainc]

Friend, dont spin or what ever, Create unique and useful content. Pandas crunch you...

[nyanainc]

One question, are you using seo hosting also or they are all hosted in the same IP also?

[JohannNortje]

I would also start by identifying the sites that brought the most traffic or money, I presume you running Adsense on these sites (side note also remember to have less ads above the fold since last layout update from Google).

The sites that are performing the best would be the ones I start with first when it comes to redesigning and making sure there is no further inter linking to the other sites.

Also make sure they are different CLASS C IP's.

[elagaan]

Yeah I would like to see any pointers towards #2, my competition is using these black hat techniques and we would like to see the best way to compete with them!

[BryanCasson]

Not the best idea, Google will hunt you down and shut you down, my guess is that they may even track you over multiple Google accounts and closely watch any related material. This is black hat all the way, I spend my life reporting pages like yours and get them shut down as quick as possible, they are viruses and have no reason to be in the results as they offer absolutely nothing to user experience. The only thing they give value to is your own pocket. There are Google Quality experts that are likely watching your sites like a hawk, my guess is that your re-inclusion requests will never be granted. I don't mean to be so blunt.. actually I do. What value are your bringing to the users?