"Original Content" Dynamic Hurting SEO? -- Strategies for Differentiating Template Websites for a Nationwide Local Business Segment?
-
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!
-
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.
-
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!
-
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.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO strategies specifically for saas companies
For location specific businesses there are many tactics to locally optimize your business letting them rank higher than large companies. Are there any tactics/strategies specifically for saas companies?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alexadedmon0 -
Our company creates cobranded subdomains for our clients; does that hurt our SEO?
We create cobranded websites for local businesses in many towns throughout the United States, always under a subdomain of our main site (e.g., afcreditunion.teachbanzai.com). Does this hurt our SEO rankings? We have a very specific reason for creating these microsites, because it's a high selling point. I've read and watched the material here on Moz regarding subdomains and subfolders, but it doesn't quite answer my question: since we create all these microsites not with the intent of passing authority to our website but with the intent of making their microsite have their branding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teachbanzai0 -
Best SEO practice for multiple languages in website
HI, We would like to include multiple languages for our global website. What's the best practice to gain from UI and SEO too. Can we have auto language choosing website as per browsing location? Or dedicated pages for important languages like www.website.com/de for German. If we go for latter, how about when users browsing beside language page as they will be usually in English
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Is tabbed content okay or bad for SEO? Google takes both sides.
Hello Moz Community! It seems like there are two opinions coming from directly from Google on tabbed content: 1) John Mueller says here that content is indexed but discounted 2) Matt Cutts says here that if you're not using tabs deceptively, you're in good shape I see this has been discussed in the Moz Q & A before, but I have an interesting situation: The pages I am building have ~50% static content, and ~50% tabbed content (only two tabs). Showing all tabbed content at once is not an option. Since the tabbed content will make up 50% of the total content, it's important that it is 100% weighted by Google. I can think of two ways to show it: 1) Standard tabs using jQuery Advantage: Both tab 1 and tab 2's content indexed Disadvantage: Tabbed content may be discounted? 2) Make the content of the tabs conditional on the server side website.com/page/ only shows tab 1's content in html website.com/page/?tab=2 only shows tab 2's content in the html. Include rel="canonical" pointing to website.com/page/. Advantage: Content of tab 1 indexed & 100% counted by Google Disadvantage: Content of tab 2 not indexed Which option is best? Is there a better solution?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jamiestu130 -
SEO agency makes "hard to believe" claims
Hi I operate in a highly competitive niche of "sell house fast" in UK. Sites that are in top 1-3 tend to have thousands of links. Some of these are spammy type links. These sites have Domain Authority too. My site has good content http://propertysaviour.co.uk and is listed with around 12 well known directories. I have been building back-links manually over the last 3-4 months. The SEO agency we are looking to work with are claiming they can get my website to first page with above keyword. How would you go about this strategy? What questions would you ask SEO agency? What elements can do I myself? By the way, I am good at producing content!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | propertysaviour0 -
Is it possible to have good SEO without links and with only quality content?
Is it possible to have good SEO without links and with only quality content? Have you any experience?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alex_Moravek2 -
Is it better "nofollow" or "follow" links to external social pages?
Hello, I have four outbound links from my site home page taking users to join us on our social Network pages (Twitter, FB, YT and Google+). if you look at my site home page, you can find those 4 links as 4 large buttons on the right column of the page: http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/ Here is my question: do you think it is better for me to add the rel="nofollow" directive to those 4 links or allow Google to follow? From a PR prospective, I am sure that would be better to apply the nofollow tag, but I would like Google to understand that we have a presence on those 4 social channels and to make clearly a correlation between our official website and our official social channels (and then to let Google understand that our social channels are legitimate and related to us), but I am afraid the nofollow directive could prevent that. What's the best move in this case? What do you suggest to do? Maybe the nofollow is irrelevant to allow Google to correlate our website to our legitimate social channels, but I am not sure about that. Any suggestions are very welcome. Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau9 -
Is a "Critical Acclaim" considered duplicate content on an eCommerce site?
I have noticed a lot of wine sites use "Critical Acclaims" on their product pages. These short descriptions made by industry experts are found on thousands of other sites. One example can be found on a Wine.com product page. Wine.com also provides USG through customer reviews on the page for original content. Are the "Critical Acclaim" descriptions considered duplicate content? Is there a way to use this content and it not be considered duplicate (i.e. link to the source)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mj7750