Best way to handle many exact match domains with ccTLDs?

[RishiRich]

I am so confused right now that i need an expert opinion.

* I have many EMD's with each EMD targeting a particular country and i sell the same product on each EMD for example <keyword> <country name>

* Since i sell the same product in each country i have the same images on all the websites with different Alt tags. Alt tags for obvious reasons have the keyword in them.

* Even the design and the coding of all the website is the same except for a banner which displays the website name.

* All the websites have minor 4 to 5 line content which is same across all the website except for the country name.

* All the websites have minor W3C Errors and the content that i have is not in the <p> tag but in the <td> tag

* Same page on the website has many different URl's

I got hit by EMD update and the moderate ranking of these websites was wiped out for obvious reasons. Many of the webmaster would say that a single big website is better than 100 micro website but i want to get my ranking back for these micro websites.

I have tried adding unique content on the home page and keeping everything else the same but this has not worked for me. Now the questions that confuse me are:

1. Even if i make the designing part different on each website and add a unique content on home page the products on the home page will continue to remain the same and the rest of the products in rest of the categories will continue to remain the same with each product having the same description.

2. I am now planning to create a unique home page for each website with different design that will only have unique content without the products being displayed. On this page i will display "Enter Our Store Now!" button and after clicking the customer will be taken to the same website that got hit by EMD. For example <keywordcountry> showing the unique banner and content and <keywordcountry/index.php> showing the same banner and products that i am running right now and that got hit my EMD. I am planning to do this across all the website.

So my question is will the unique content and banner get my ranking back for the home page whereas the rest of the website can continue to have the duplicate content ?

I am not trying to outsmart google in anyway and the domains were not developed to be ranked in Google but for Adwords. I had no idea that they would achieve rankings in Google and then hit get by EMD update. Now these Adwords bills are killing me and now i am trying to get these rankings back!

Any help and suggestion would be greatly appreciated!

Rishi

[Robert Charlton]

Mod's note on acronyms: To better describe the situation, I've added ccTLDs, standing for "country code top-level domains", to the title.... And EMD, of course, stands for "Exact Match Domain".

Note for reference the date of the EMD algo update and our discussion about it...

Algo Change Targets Low Quality Exact Match Domains 9-28-2012
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4501349.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Rishi - Was your drop entirely on Sept 28, or were you hit on other dates as well? I ask because the content as you describe it sounds extremely thin, and I'm surprised that the EMDs alone could have supported even moderate ranking. Any other drops besides Sept 28th?

[RishiRich]

Yes the ranking drop was around the time EMD was pushed and was across all the EMD's except for around 10 % of the EMD's that were hit and then recovered their rankings in the next few months but have now dropped a couple of places over the past few days.

I have compared everything but have no idea as to why those 10 % of the websites recovered ?

P.S. Thanks for making the subject a catchy one!