I believe that I understand your dilemma now. If this answer is in
any way inaccurate, please feel free to ask for answer clarification
and I'll try to refine it to your situation.
I did a bit of research on what others have discovered with respect to
duplicated content and search engines rankings. A Google search for
"duplicatied content penalty google" resulted in a number of links,
mostly on forums discussing the issue.
On the page at http://forums.seochat.com/showthread.php?t=8510, a
member discusses the fact that only one copy of the duplicated content
will usually be returned as a result. The other forum postings
returned by the search seem to indicate that this is the case.
Since search engines usually - now bear in mind this is a very broad
statement, since engines each use different secret algorithms and even
these change all the time - rank pages higher by the number of unique
incoming links, you'll find that even with 100+ of your duplicate
sites pointing back to your original site, there will likely only be a
small increase in your page rank.
From what I can tell, you certainly won't be harming the search engine
rank of any pages not related to the duplicated content. It is
possible you might get a small bump in rank indirectly, as 140 clients
point to your content, which then points to your main site. 140
unique incoming links pointing at your content site will probably give
your content site a fair boost.
Knowing this, I would highly suggest hosting the pages on your own
site and not worrying about adding a robots.txt exclusion for the
duplicated content. Since it appears to be safe for all other pages,
duplication shouldn't be a problem. Keeping them all under the same
domain name (as you have now, with www.domain.com/client/page.htm) is
the best way to go about it.
As for tool suggestions, I highly recommend looking into Fog Creek
CityDesk: http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk/. CityDesk is an excellent
tool for page templating and publishing. You can create one copy of
each of your pages to template in the program and then use it to
publish the pages to a number of subdirectories using a different
template for each one. There is a free starter edition that will
allow you to publish up to 50 pages here:
http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk/Starter.html
Once you've used DreamWeaver to create a template for one of your
clients, you would import it into CityDesk as a "template set". You
would then point it at your site's FTP server and it would
automatically create the correct subdirectories for you. Each of the
pages would be published into the correct subdirectory, corresponding
to the template they are using. I've used the program extensively in
the past and it is an excellent tool for easily duplicating identical
content a number of times using a different look and feel.
In conclusion, I recommend staying with the "one subdirectory per
client" approach on the same domain. This will by far be the easiest
for you to manage if you ever need to update the pages. CityDesk is
also most compatible with this setup and should make maintaining this
setup a breeze.
Please let me know if I've answered the question to your satisfaction.
Don't hesitate to ask me to expand on any of the info I've given
here.
Good luck and regards,
mmastrac-ga |
