SEO semi-mirrored sites that don't anger google

Question

I'm working with a client who manages real-estate agents. All of these agents have their own individual sites, and they all want the same layout and functionality. So, I have a "master" site designed which is dynamically changed to fit the agent/area/whatever through a MySQL database. We have relatively static content in the DB about the agent and the area, then the rest is very dynamic content from a listing service, which is updated daily.

My question is how to set this up so that we can keep on using all the different domains and identical programming (i.e. all the files are identical, except pictures) and have decent SEO as well.

They had some trouble in the past with Google blacklisting their sites because they were considered "mirrored sites". Which...they pretty much are, but the difference between mirrored sites is that we're searching very different areas of the listings DB.

Ideally, all the listings are relatively unique to each site, but sometimes there aren't any listings for the area, or the listings for two sites overlap...that's when they get busted for the mirrorring.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to both have decent SEO for the individual sites, and keep it easy to manage? There are currently over 100 sites (20 agents, about 5 sites each--one agent site, and a few "area" sites), so not mirroring things is just a ton of work.

Answer 1

Keep googlebot off the parts of the site that are sometimes duplicated between sites (the real estate listing). Put those parts of the site into robots.txt or use a meta robots nofollow tag. Another alternative would be to load this data into the pages via AJAX.

You say that there is indeed unique information on each site about the real estate agent. Focus on expanding that information. Provide a mechanism for the agent to provide you with more information or even to write content for their site.

If an agent is acting as the sellers agent for a listing and created the listing, then let that particular listing live on their site.