The Microsite is Dead, Long Live the Microsite

I’m not a big fan of microsites. There, I said it.

While reading Vanessa Fox’s blog post Microsites: A Bad Idea Most of the Time, I found myself nodding my head over and over again. Microsites can not only dilute, misrepresent and ultimately conflict with your brand, they can be both a missed marketing opportunity and an SEO nightmare.

We’ve all been there. Sometimes there are technical limitations that prevent the cool new demo or technology. Sometimes there are hosting issues. Sometimes you get more leeway creatively with a new site than with the main site. These are all well-intentioned reasons to have a microsite.

But here’s the thing: You may be missing a huge opportunity to help the overall health of your main site, so you must evaluate the need carefully.

So if you may be in the microsite market, let’s play that tape all the way through. In this blog post, we’re going to fast-forward to the flying car future and ask some basic questions before we jump on the microsite bandwagon.

How about a microsite! Why do you need a microsite again?

Before we even get into SEO, are you absolutely sure that this new site will not conflict with your brand or audience, has achievable goals and strategy? Really? 100% sure?

Also, can you promise me that this isn’t your ad agency’s plan for everything? Alrighty, let’s move forward.

Do you have a microsite SEO strategy?

Microsites are great for those who love doing twice the work. I’ve yet to find a client that is satisfied with the look, feel and execution of their main site, so adding more work to their plate is the last thing they want to do.

Even if f you doing a great job of search engine optimization on your existing site, what is the likelihood of success and follow-through on the new site as it likely be a lot more work?

All of the new content, link building, traffic and publicity/awareness you’re going to need to do for the new site to be successful, could also be helping your overall brand and main site. Additionally, all the old content, existing link building, traffic and awareness could instead be helping your new content much more directly if it was on your main site. Plus, I’m guessing the traffic would convert much better.

What is your URL strategy?

Going after the old “keywords in the URL” microsite strategy sounds great in theory and is often used as a reason why you SHOULD have a microsite, but it doesn’t always work.

Unless you’re buying an aftermarket domain name, the theory has little value. Yes, the engines take keywords in the URL into account, but my tests (and others’) have found that unless the domain has some age/trust to it, the benefit to a site can be negligible. A brand new CoolBlueWidgets.com isn’t going to automatically rank No. 1 for “blue widgets,” nor will CoolBlueWidgets.com/blue-widgets/blue_widgets.

More than likely, the microsite will be a brand new URL anyway and I am going to venture that it will not be found in relevant searches because it’s going to lack the content depth, links and age.

So unless you plan on having this site forever…

… Which you won’t, so what’s your exit strategy?

While we’d love to think that your new microsite will live forever, the chances are high it will not.  At some point the need for the microsite may diminish rapidly, so what is the game plan for D Day? If the product or service still exists, how will you redirect the microsite URLs? How will you Don’t waste the equity you do build into the microsite.

So what can I do instead of a microsite?

Spend the time, effort and resources from that microsite into offsite social media, onsite blogging and other types of content development. In the long run, it may be a much better use of your time.

All this said, microsites can have some value, such as with A/B testing, affiliate marketing, lead generation, etc., but I am guessing if those are your goals, you’re not reading this article.

Just promise me that from this point forward, you will not be a company that solves every marketing problem with a microsite.

Flickr photo courtesy of Mary Thorman