Microsite SEO Strategies
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| Use microsites to expand your SEO power. You’ll be amazed at the results. |
If you’ve managed to get your site into the top of the search engine results for the key phrases you’ve targeted, congratulations.
But this is no time to rest on your laurels.
Beyond simply getting your main site to the top of the search engine results, you may want to consider implementing a microsite strategy.
A microsite strategy involves creating additional sites to promote whatever it is that you are selling.
If executed correctly, you can end up having multiple sites that promote your offerings in the top search engine results.
The microsites you create must be very different from your main site and very different from each other. If the content is identical, Google, Yahoo and Bing will discount the value of the microsites.
The microsites also need to create value in their own right. In other words, they might take a topic on your main site that you cover in two pages and expand the coverage on that topic to 50 pages.
For example, let’s say you own a law firm that specializes in employment law, intellectual property and real estate transactions. You’ve gotten the law firm web site to rank well in the search engines. So how would you go about doing even better by implementing a microsite SEO strategy?
You might, for example, create a microsite dedicated to the nuances of employment law. It could contain more detail on specific case types. If you execute everything correctly, your main site might end up #1 in the search results for a phrase like “Employment Law Experts” and your microsite might end up being #2 for that same phrase.
In this way, you can block your competitors out of the top of the search results. You can double your exposure to prospects because you’ve now got two sites selling for you, not just one. It’s like going from having only one salesperson to having two sales people.
You probably have a few questions: Why not just add the new content to my main site? Can I get penalized by Google for doing this? How much does it cost to build a microsite? Should I link from my main site to the microsite? Is it better to have a blog or a microsite?
I’ve got answers for all your questions. Just post a comment below and I’ll respond. Also, if you have experience executing a microsite strategy and would be willing to share what worked well and what didn’t work, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave a comment below.
The bottomline on microsites? They can be a great way to expand your marketing presence on the web. At Walker Sands, we’ve worked with many clients to create niche microsites and it has been a very effective strategy for our clients.
– Note from Ken, the author, on August 17, 2010
Somebody emailed me asking for microsite examples. For those of you contemplating a microsite strategy who might need a specific example, here’s a geographically focused microsite: STD Testing Chicago. A microsite in the same family is: STD Testing Dallas. Each site is about five pages. Microsites make sense and are completely legitimate in this case because the company has a local presence in many markets and people shop and buy with local in mind.
Over time, the site owners can grow the content and get more inbound links. They’ll have to do that to stay competitive. Again, just to reiterate, microsites are not a cure-all by any means. Having keyphrases in the domain helps a ton because it conveys meaningful information to the search engines. But there’s still a lot of work to be done that goes beyond just acquiring those domains.
Ken Gaebler founded Walker Sands as a full-service marketing firm back in 2002 with the goal of creating an exceptional consulting firm that could be instrumental in helping other organizations to achieve greatness.
Ken, are there any applications where a microsite might not be the best solution and instead just building off my original site would be best? I don’t know that I can think of one, but why isn’t everyone just building microsites for everything instead of new pages on their current Web site?
Generating the microsites can be quite time consuming, so the benefits for creating it should be quite big.
On the other hand microsites can allow to test the water with new ideas, without the whole test going to waste, as the microsites can promote the main site.
Sky, great question. One good reason to build a microsite is that you can buy a domain name that is very search engine friendly. So, for example, a company that sells computer parts could buy, say, computercables.com and bulid a microsite dedicated to computer cables. They are going to rank better in most search engines because they have that microsite domain.The reason most people don’t bother with microsites is that they feel that having one site is enough to manage. So they build out content on their main site, while they might do better to build a microsite.To answer your question more directly, I would say there’s no need to go to a microsite strategy if you haven’t fully optimized your main site and maximized your traffic to that site. But once you start hitting diminishing returns on your main site, you may want to start building a few microsites and see how they perform.
Blogger, you are right that creating microsites can be time-consuming. However, I’d estimate that the cost to build a good microsite could be as little as $5,000. For most companies, it’s easy to get a strong ROI on that kind of investment. Your other point, that microsites are good for testing, is a great one. You can be conservative on your main site and try being wild and crazy on your microsite. In this way, you can try something new without putting the core brand and its core positioning at risk.
Hello,
Ken, I have one question for you, can i able to generate lead from the microsite.. if means plz let me know your great tips..
Thanks
Murthy
Murthy, absolutely. The whole idea of creating a microsite is to derive benefits from it such as new leads. In other blog posts, we will touch on how to maximize leads from a website. Thanks.
Hi Ken, your blog’s just great. Could I know what kind of SEO strategies would be suitable to bring visitors or users to a microsite?
Naresh, when launching a microsite, the SEO strategies will be very similar to good SEO techniques for any site: on-page optimization, site wide SEO best practices, get good inbound links, etc. As with any site, it’s best to have site content that humans, not just bots, will find interesting and useful. Good luck with your microsites!
Hi Ken,
I would like to know few things:
1. Is it better to have microsite in same domain when you deal with almost same catalogs or should I have different website(domain) altogether? In both case when say ‘shirts’ is searched over internet, I would want both websites to be featured in search results.
2. If cost and SEO is going to be same, what are the reasons to go for a microsite?
Gaurav, a microsite within the same domain can be an effective strategy. In effect, a microsite within a site is just a section of a site that is dedicated to a given area. So, for example, a PR firm like Walker Sands might create a section within their site that focuses exclusively on PR for Banks, or something like that. Doing this gives you a place to add a lot of content and interlink the related content and thus do better in search results. But the downside of this is that you only get one site in the search results. With completely separate sites, i.e. a main site and a microsite, you have the potential to get two spots in the search results. You also increase your chances of getting on-topic links to the microsite, because it is so focused on a single topic. For your shirts example, you might have a general site that sells all kinds of shirts, and then you might have a microsite that is dedicated to Shirts with Thumb Holes, for example. By putting the time and effort into creating a dedicated site about Shirts with Thumb Holes and getting links to the site with relevant anchort text, odds are your microsite will rank well for that phrase. As to your last question, again, separate microsites give you the opportunity to play with different branding, you can buy an SEO-friendly domain, and odds are the site will do better than the main site in search engines simply because it has a niche focus. Note that you’ve got to make the content on the microsite different from the main site content…otherwise, you run into duplicate content issues in which one site gets flagged as being supplemental and you no longer get two sites showing up in the search engine results. Hope this helps you!
Ken,
I’m building a small network of microsites that use specific anchor text, keywords to link to each other. Each microsite has a banner linked to my main website.
1) Should I have a “nofollow” on my main banner link that all sites have in common? Someone suggested that I use descriptive anchor text, keywords with “follow” instead.
2) Is there a limit to the number of microsites one should have to avoid being seen as a link farm?
Thank you!
It is great strategy to focus on building microsites!
What you think about building specific product name keyword based sites?
In the most cases you have less competition and these types of keywords are more targeted keywords or buying keywords.
Best wishes!
Branko,
Product name keyword based sites need multiple strategies because the search engines are starting show more collected data (ecommerce pricing, reviews, videos, etc) in a universal search results.
Try searching for a digital camera such as the: canon s90. The SERPs have videos, a google product page listing with reviews and pricing from best buy, walmart and others. in addition, there are a few videos from youtube. All of this is getting tougher and tougher to compete with.
John
Hektor,
Sorry for the late reply. I’ve been busy…building microsites and other things. If your microsites are reasonably legit and not spammy, I wouldn’t worry about putting a “no follow” tag on the banner. Think of your microsites as being subsidiary businesses or offices. A large company that has many subsidiary websites happily links from the subsidiary company sites to their parent company site with a followed link. You should have the same privilege.
Regarding your second question, others might disagree with me, but I don’t think link farm penalties will matter much or be relevant AS LONG AS each of the microsites is a decent site with good content. In other words, don’t have the exact same content on 500 sites, each with a keyword-loaded domain name. The real limit on the number of microsite domains you can have thus becomes how well you can create valuable domains. Having said all of the above, I would say that Google certainly can discern that the links between microsites are related. Moreover, the PageRank conveyed by each microsite will be very limited if you don’t get inbound links to the microsites from non-related sites. Long story short, sparse microsites with links that only come from other microsites owned by the same party will only do well in non-competitive search categories. At the end of the day, the basics apply — you need good useful content and lots of links for any site, microsite or not, in order to ensure that you stay ahead of the competition.
What about a microsite that is part of a larger company. I have a franchise that has the main company which is branded extensively. The sites they give us are one page and the content is somewhat limited. How would I go about optimizing my page so that people in the area around me could find me? Thanks!
Microsites configured properly can be quite effective at driving visitors to your main site by offering a healthy boost in the search engine results pages for your main site. Eventually, your microsites will begin to rank well and if you are good, you may own all of page one on Google.
Nobody likes competition.
Consider this:
Main site is A. Let’s say it is about dog training.
Create niche sites related to dog training. We’ll call them sites B-F (or more, if you are so inclined and got the energy). Expand on ideas about dog training different than your main site. Do not ever copy content from any of your sites. They must be unique.
Link sites B to C, C to D, D to E, and so on. Do not interlink all your microsites! This builds relevance in the eyes of the search engines if all sites are in the same niche. Add backlinks to those sites and try to get them indexed in Google on their own right (even if they are buried on page 6). Add content, keep building backlinks and bring them to page 1-2 over time. Yes, it takes time. 3-6 months if you aggressively market your B-F sites.
Now, on occasion, create an article on one of your B-F sites and link back to your A site using proper anchor text.
As they say, lather, rinse and repeat.
This is a very powerful technique. Enjoy and own page one!
I like your page. This page is very Informative.
SEO really helps your website to be noticed. It really plays a great role in promoting your website.
But also it important to really know best practices we need to consider on optimizing it.
Some very good information here –
We are exploring building a network of micro-sites as well.
Focused on ulta-local segmentation, but still focused on a single product (garage doors) – at what point do similar/duplicate content issues raise their heads. 10%? 50% etc?
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