Wordpress site structure for 3 essentially duplicate sites in the same country

Question

I've built a website for a client which signposts visitors to other websites where they can access health and wellbeing resources.

As such the website is mostly made of short pieces of copy, some nice design and images, and then outbound links directing the visitor offsite to find the help they need.

The website has proven to be successful in the regional area that it targets. Now a couple of other adjoining regions (this is all in the same country) have approached the client and would like versions of the website for their locality. However the new regions want it to look, feel and read the same as the original and pretty much all of the outbound links will also be the same.

Our concern is apart from changing the regional names and adjusting the SEO for this, we are submitting pretty much duplicate content to the search engines. Is this going to end up being confusing for both the search engines and the visitors?

Also the original site is on Wordpress, is there any merit making these new sites part of a wordpress multisite or microsite network? If so which one would be most suitable?

Apart from being able to drop the regional name into the domain, is there any other benefit to the 3 websites each having a standalone domain rather than creating a subdomain for each one?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

So, I'll start from the end of your question.

Separate domains, subdomains, and even Multisite all depend solely on who will be managing everything in the future. That is, when creating the structure, base it on the client's needs. Another point is that if all webmaster actions regarding content will be on you, then do it in the way that's easiest for you.

It's better to make the content unique - it's not as difficult as it seems. Each region = separate unique content.