Having the same theme on all multiple sites of yours? Is this bad SEO?

[Kratos]

I was talking to this lady yesterday who also has her own websites and she mentioned that she was going to use the same Wordpress theme for all her sites, about 17 sites in total. She'll be using same Wordpress theme but obviously tailored to each of her blogs.

From what I know, Google can tell if different sites use the same CMS, be it a Wordpress theme, vBulletin theme and what not. One question I had when she told me that was that if Google would downrank a set of blogs which belong to the same person and which use the same theme.

These blogs are naturally interconnected and in the same niche (in a peculiar automobile niche), so the 17 blogs link out to each other contextually through blog posts (no spamming, she only links out when she knows its of use). However, she is keeping the same theme on all blogs so that only the title/menu words (and obviously, content) changes between blogs.

My reasoning is that if a visitor went from blog A to blog B (both belong to her), there could be a chance that the visitor doesn't pick up that he/she is in a new site, since blog A and blog B share the same background/style/colors/fonts/theme. This could theoretically (and depending on how you see it) be a bad user experience.

So here I am thinking if Google will slightly downrank sites that Google knows belong to the same person (i.e. author tag) and which share the same theme? We all know how Google is so obsessed with the user experience, and from my own experience, I have discovered several on-page trivial factors that have boosted my rankings. I'm taking of stuff you'd consider trivial as a webmaster, but which Google pays a lot of (perhaps unneeded) attention to and which Google either positively rewards or directly downranks.

So, what are your thoughts on using the same theme on blogs that belong to the same person? Google would both be able to tell rapidly that for the 17 blogs the theme is the same, the styling is the same and the author is the same person.

Would Google negatively affect a site/sites due to this or would not having the same theme in each of the 17 blogs count as a positive factor (especially when receiving links from sites with different themes)?

If my question/topic isn't clear, I can expand on it more. Thank you.

[EditorialGuy]

I think a bigger issue is having 17 interconnected sites in the same niche. Are they EMDs?

[Kratos]

No. They belong to her but are editorial blogs with collaborators for the most part. The niche is big enough (inside automobile industry) for 17 sites to belong to a single person. She actually covers quite a big chunk of it with this.

No EMDs or spammy techniques.

Thoughts on using the same theme with the same styling/format for all 17 sites?

Edit to say that even though she has collaborators and some UGC, all her sites are tagged with her Google authorship (Google knows all sites are hers and belong to her profile).

[edited by: Kratos at 4:54 pm (utc) on Apr 4, 2015]

[netmeg]

I have eight sites with the same theme that do spectacularly well in Google and fifty sites with the same theme that do okay (some better than others). So in my experience it doesn't matter. Its user experience, content and usefulness that matter.

[Kratos]

@netmeg Are you using the same Wordpress theme or is this for another CMS?

Do you also keep the styling relatively similar (e.g. background color, font type and size, menu layout) among all sites, especially those 8 sites that are doing quite well?

[netmeg]

WordPress, yes. It's a custom Genesis child theme and the only difference between the sites is a small graphic strip at the top. Everything else identical. They are event sites specific to different locations so the content is unique between sites; I didn't see any reason to vary the design or layout.

[Kratos]

@netmeg Thanks.

I would expect Google to give some leeway with regards to similitude of themes considering how widespread the use of Wordpress is, but seeing how Google is so all over UX it comes a point where one can only wonder.

[tangor]

Themes, in general, aren't SEO good or bad, particularly Wordpress, as everyone is using them (themes). But having 17 iterations of the same niche (sub-divided to extremes) might have an adverse effect on all, whereas if all were one site with hierarchy navigation might reinforce the whole.

[toidi]

I thought it was called branding. I don't use wordpress, but my sites all look the same because they are my brand.

[netmeg]

I thought it was called branding. I don't use wordpress, but my sites all look the same because they are my brand.

That's pretty much my reasoning.

Also I have plenty of users who border two locations, so they use more than one site. It'd be silly to present them with two widely different looks and navigation.

[RedBar]

I don't use wordpress, but my sites all look the same because they are my brand.

Me too, I have mycompanyname/com/co.uk/asia/eu/cn/in/ru/br/etc all using the same corporate colours and templates, it's never been an issue with Google and Bing absolutely loves them.

[Kratos]

Thanks for the replies.

In this case, the 17 blogs are different, not just iterations of different tlds.

I asked this question from a UX point of view. Say you're on Blog A and reading an article about how to repair a flat tire, then inside the article is a link with anchor text "have a look at these car kits" (natural contextual link) and it takes you to an article on blog B talking about said car kits.

You land from Blog A to Blog B and you may not know you're on a different site due to the strong styling similitude. As you keep reading, you realize you're on another site which could be interpreted (by the UX exceptionally obsessed Googlers) as a bad user experience as the visitor thought he was still on the same site (Blog A).

I only ask this because in the last 6 months I have made some discoveries with regards to UX that as I said in a previous post were absolutely trivial but Google seems to pay a lot of attention to it, as implementing these discoveries had a positive rank effect on all sites that had it implemented. This highlighted to me how obsessed Google is with UX, and some of this stuff is very easy to look over as a webmaster. This has taught me to question everything on a site and how it is navigated at the extent of bordering analysis paralysis.

[edited by: Kratos at 1:38 pm (utc) on Apr 5, 2015]

[samwest]

I always assumed content is more important to G than presentation. You could have a site like css zen garden with a user selectable theme and it would not affect serps. That was the point of CSS, to separate content from presentation.
Although one has to wonder how presentation affects G's valuation of "user experience". Clearly plain text site would be trumped by a nicely done CSS presentation...at least in the users eyes.

[EditorialGuy]

Although one has to wonder how presentation affects G's valuation of "user experience".

It comes into play for the "above the fold" or "page layout" algorithm, and for things like font size and sizes of tap targets when gauging whether a site is "mobile-friendly."

But I wouldn't expect Google to pay much attention to themes per se. Google has no way of knowing whether the user thinks Cooper Black is ugly or prefers vibrant, colorful layouts to peaceful, low-key page design.

[netmeg]

I asked this question from a UX point of view. Say you're on Blog A and reading an article about how to repair a flat tire, then inside the article is a link with anchor text "have a look at these car kits" (natural contextual link) and it takes you to an article on blog B talking about said car kits.

This might be closer to your issue than UX.

[Kratos]

This might be closer to your issue than UX.

@netmeg What do you mean?

[netmeg]

I mean you might consider that to be a "natural contextual link" but it's quite possible Google won't. Particularly if there's a lot of them across 17 websites.

[Kratos]

There is nothing wrong with linking inside a post on your site to an article on another site of yours if the linking makes sense. Of course, doing it on every post and linking 3,4,5 times in each post will raise a flag, but placing a single link to a related article on another site of oneself is perfectly acceptable. That's what she does, and that's what I do too and never encountered a problem.

Bear in mind we're talking of white hat sites that dominate a niche and provide great useful content with lots of interaction. We aren't talking of linking wheels and all that other spam nonsense, nor are we talking of simply linking out to pass PR at the extent of decreasing the user experience.

I'm going to edit to say that my example was not a particularly good one as it was just something off the top of my head and I was actually meaning an emergency kit. So if you get a flat tire, having an emergency kit would be something you may be interested, and hence a link to an article that goes through emergency kits makes sense in a - how to fix a flat tire - article.

[netmeg]

I didn't say there's anything wrong with it. I'm saying you have a very fine line to walk if you care about Google traffic.

Bear in mind we're talking of white hat sites that dominate a niche and provide great useful content with lots of interaction.

Well yea, that's what we ALL run, right?

[lucy24]

My reasoning is that if a visitor went from blog A to blog B (both belong to her), there could be a chance that the visitor doesn't pick up that he/she is in a new site, since blog A and blog B share the same background/ style/ colors/ fonts/ theme.

(emphasis mine) That's five different things. If the sites all have the identical background colors then yes the human user might be confused and think they're still on the same site-- or remember them later as all the same blog, which probably isn't what you want. But if they each have different colors, and minor differences in font and other visuals, they'll look different to a human. (You and I may snoop into a page's HTML, count stylesheets, sneer at the code and so on, but I don't believe this is something the ordinary human does on a regular basis.)