Don't Make a Macro Mistake With Your Micro Site

Don't Make a Macro Mistake With Your Micro Site

via HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog by Rick Burnes on 5/14/09

Last week I spent some time speaking with Jess Dennis of Red Shoes PR about the firm's upcoming seminar, Bottom Line: Social Media for Business. (If you're near Appleton, WI on June 4, stop by -- I'm speaking!)

When we spoke, Jess explained that she and her business partners were trying to figure out whether to put the event website on a new domain (a microsite), or make it a page within their existing site (www.redshoespr.com).

Because they were hosting the event in conjunction with the Fox Cities Chamber of Commerce, they wanted to create some distance between the event brand and their own brand, so they were leaning towards a microsite on a new domain.

I agreed with their assessment.

I was fired up about the event when I got off the phone, so I turned to one of my colleagues who sits next to me here at HubSpot, and explained the situation. I got an unexpectedly sharp reaction: "Microsite -- why would they want to do that?"

Then he went on to explain the basic problem: Microsites can be SEO liabilities.

Think about it. You spend years building links and optimizing pages on your main site. You build up some Google juice, you start ranking for some great terms. Then a new project comes along and because it has its own brand identity, the powers that be decide it needs to be on a separate domain.

Goodbye Google juice.

Instead of building on the SEO authority you worked so hard to accrue, you have to start building it all over again. And in the mean time, your new microsite isn't going to rank well.

Of course, there are circumstances in which a microsite makes sense. For example, if you're trying to build a new, long-lasting brand, a microsite is probably the right way to go.

When we set up the website for the Inbound Marketing Summit last year, we knew we wanted to keep the name and build it into a brand. So we went with a microsite.

That decision cost us search engine traffic in the short term, but it's now helping New Marketing Labs, the company that purchased the Summit from us earlier this year.

Microsites also make sense if you care more about the site's unique brand and user experience than about search engine optimization.

So what's the takeaway?

Simple. The next time you're considering setting up a microsite, ask yourself this: Is the new site a permanent brand I want to invest in? And, if that's the case, am I willing to take an SEO hit in the short term?

If the answer to either of those questions is no, you probably shouldn't go with microsite on its own domain.

What do you think? What reasons to use or not to use microsites am I not considering?

Webinar: Website Redesign

Learn how to redesign your website with an internet marketing strategy in mind Download the free webinar to learn how to turn your website into an internet marketing machine.

-----------------------------------------------------