Is it bad to have same templates for all of my EMDs

[SanketPatel]

I am not sure but as per my experience, it is not affect your SEO if you have same template but different content.  If you have different content for all your site then Google does not consider your sites as duplicate site. My client have multilingual site having same template but still he ranked in top 10.

[MagicDude4Eva]

You could face the risk if your sites are interlinked and a manual review flags the sites as similar and demotes some. I think this is a very rare case and it will be unlikely that it could happen. Just remember, Google has a better understanding of link-graphs then any tool available. I have seen some sites drop due to a manual review (the demotion was not because of same UI though).

I honestly would not worry too much about it as long as your copy, brand, keywords and onpage SEO differs.

[Personnel_Concept]

yeah I believe at the moment thers is no problem I am assuming that Google algorithm updates might introduce something like that in future where it might use same templates as one factor to know if the sites are all same, hosted on same servers and liked with each other and hence might be come under spam

[Personnel_Concept]

yes, even my sites are ranking at top 5 for most of the keywords but I am afraid some future update might change things!

[SanketPatel]

Hi,

So not to worry about the same template, if your site having unique content then same design  doesn't  harm your ranking.

[MoosaHemani]

I am assuming that you are talking about design template of the EMDs (websites) so in that case from the SEO point of view there won’t be any problem but from the user point of view people might frustrates by going to different domains but finding the same kind of websites... but again every niche’s behavior towards website is kind of different.

from the technical website there is no problem in having the same template!

[Personnel_Concept]

yeah, thought so but do you think any future update might include anything like that ?

[KevinBudzynski]

IMHO, no I don't believe so.

Consider an ecommerce platform like opencart. The default template is probably being used tens of thousands of time with unqiue content and to penalize all those sites because of it , probably will not improve the end user's experience.

The purpose of algo updates is to improve the user's experience--so the content   is the key and not necessarily the template (unless it's extremely poor and affects usability).

[MoosaHemani]

no clue seriously! Google is in the teen age and doing all the smart things that a super awesome kid should do to prove himself the best among others (sometime it didn't went well...)

I must not say it is not possible but at the moment there is no such thing like this!

[MagicDude4Eva]

This is already happening - do a search for "google manual review" and have a look at the manual review process. Google currently employs companies to perform manual website reviews based on search terms to classify web-sites.

So although you have the same template, different content and websites, the danger is that your sites from a link-building perspective interlink and a manual review might demote all of them.

Chances are slim as others said, but certainly possible.

[Personnel_Concept]

thanks for sharing your opinion .

[Personnel_Concept]

That's a good example. Thanks for sharing.

Though, I guess if something like this happens it wont be template update alone, it might be a combination of low quality, bit of similar pattern seen in content and few other factors like all similar EMDs with similar templates interlinked and so on.

[Personnel_Concept]

hey Gerd, thanks thats helpful. I searched it and found some nice reads! Didn't know about manual reviews. But I guess manual review is somtime good as If you have good quality brand sites (EMDs) then you dont have to worry about machine algo picking your site by mistake.

[AndyMacLean]

Consider this, a huge chunk of the websites out there use off the shelf templates (think Wordpress). Even Matt cuts blog is an off the shelf (if edited) template.

[Personnel_Concept]

yeah fair enough .. Thanks Andy