This is the situation. I just purchased 5 domains. abc, def, xyz.com I am going to use the identicle template on all domains but am going to change the folder in which the images are in that make up the template. For example. ww.abc.com/images/right_column.gif would become ww.def.com/images1/right_column.gif Therefore we have a whole new site that is actually unique in the way the images are different in their folder/file name. The question is...is this necessary to prevent duplication penalties? Does Google or other search engines look for identicle templates being used?
i am no expert by any means and i do NOT know if it is needed at all.... what i do is possibly overkill to be on the safe side, and also reduces the code to word count as well on my newer sites. for me /images1/right_column.gif would become /i/rc.gif likewise any css tags are shortened to a few letters.... then its just a quick search and replace through the templates. my reasoning behind this is because a robot/spider can not SEE the layout it see's the code and the difference between /images/right_column.gif and /i/rc.gif is greater than it is between /images1/right_column.gif Thats my logic behind it anyway, but as i say it depends if you think it is needed and on that i just do not know for sure.
you really don't need to worry about all of that as long as the actual content is unique.... How many sites are there selling templates? How many of theose people actually change the naming conventions? Very few is my guess Anyways... sounds fine..or a little too much work if anything
Good help guys, but are these template sellers actually hosting the templates? If their server goes down then your template goes down.
It's about content, not template. Large CMS's like Drupal and Joomla are used by a lot of big name sites out there, they have the same templates as other sites in a lot of cases but aren't punished.