If I had a pound for every time a client asked about launching a microsite or creating some sort of off-site hub, let’s just say I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this post. (That might need a fact check but you get my drift.)
A microsite is usually a small website created on a new domain but linked to an organisation’s main site. They are usually created with a sole purpose in mind, such as to promote a product or to be used at an event. In general, this makes them reasonably quick and cheap to build.
In my experience, I think many opt for this microsite approach as it means a project can progress without having to bother all the usual suspects involved in policing an organisation’s primary website. It’s a sort of quick route or solution to get a campaign moving, a product launched or a project up and running.
In some instances, I’ve also seen companies take this approach to de-risk an idea and launch something away from the main brand – a sort of test bed if you like. However, given a microsite is usually linked to an organisation’s main site, I’d contest whether the risk is actually reduced in any significant way.
However, on 99.9% of these occasions, my advice is to believe in the idea and create the content on the main domain. There may be instances where a microsite or standalone site is better (although I’m genuinely struggling to think when that might be), so here are my reasons why this approach is generally best avoided.
Keyword rich domain
More often than not, a microsite is built on a keyword-rich / exact-match domain. However, search engines are pretty sophisticated and as long as the content is optimised well, a keyword-rich or exact match domain is no longer needed or beneficial for SEO – in fact, it can look quite spammy and less authoritative – and no longer helps rankings. As Joe Friedlein, says in his post on domain names, search engines and people understand that the brand name is not necessarily representative of what it sells (Orange and Apple being two good examples).
Link building
When multiple sites exist there can be a missed opportunity when links are accidentally built to the microsite rather than the main domain. So while the microsite might start to make small inroads in authority, these links are only helping one small area of the business. Multiple, deep links pointing to the main site have the benefit of lifting the entire domain and therefore supporting all areas of the business. While you can control where some links point to – you can’t control them all.
Investment
A microsite doesn’t stand much chance of ranking unless it has continuous investment. This means updating the content regularly and constantly reviewing opportunities to generate additional traffic. While Google says that the length of time a domain has been registered is not specifically a ranking factor, the longer it has existed and the better the depth of content means Google has more time to understand what the site in question represents. A new microsite is immediately behind on both of these fronts.
In addition, however closely websites are monitored there will always be the odd gremlin in the system causing the site to slow down, a form to fail, an increase in spam, or a cyberattack. It’s much much easier to have eyes on one site than on multiple domains that need multiple fixes.
Customer journey
Most microsites will point back to the organisation’s main site and if that is the preferred customer journey, then why not direct customers to the main site in the first place? Each additional click will result in a loss of traffic, so organisations must bear that in mind when making a customer’s journey longer than is necessary. It’s also worth bearing in mind that when a user clicks on a link on a microsite to land on the main site, the user will appear as ‘referral traffic’ in GA4 which disguises the true origination of that visit.
Branding/identity benefits
When an organisation uses a microsite, it may prevent visitors from getting the full-fat version of a brand and its heritage which can be hugely influential when a customer is deciding who they want to deal with. If an organisation’s ESG policy is significant or its blog or news section is a great showcase for the brand, it really should be readily available to all potential customers. By their very nature, microsites are usually a condensed version of one product or service area and so visitors are limited in the information that they can access.
Duplicate content
Content is often duplicated across a microsite and the primary domain which can confuse search engines as they don’t understand which version to show in search results. This can sometimes lead to both sites performing poorly and ranking lower than they might have done if just one site hosted the material.
Cannibalisation of traffic
If the content on the microsite is similar to that of the main site, and the microsite starts to rank, there is a risk of cannibalising traffic from the main site. This means that in GA4, specific pages on the main site could appear to be losing traffic when in fact the traffic is just being directed to the microsite instead.
Link networks
If an organisation starts to build several microsites and links between them, a seemingly innocuous network of links starts looking ominous to search engines. This was previously a black hat SEO technique that boosted link profiles and domain authority but Google is now particularly wise to this tactic. One microsite here or there isn’t going to get confused with this practice but if microsites become common across an organisation, it can lead to penalties.
Advertising
Advertising/PPC leads could be more expensive when those leads are being pushed towards a microsite rather than a more established brand. Quality Score (QS) is a metric Google uses to evaluate ad quality and how well ads will perform against competitors. Part of this score is based on the expected click-through rate and the landing page experience – both of which may be low when they are pointing towards a brand-new microsite. However, a more established site that has already undertaken some PPC activity is likely to see a lower cost per click.
Social media
Social media channels will normally point towards the main site so sharing a microsite via existing social media platforms could be confusing to the customer. An alternative is to create new social media channels for the microsite but these in turn then need updating and will take a while to become established.
Cross-domain tracking
When an organisation has multiple sites, it can be difficult to monitor success. Cross-domain tracking isn’t impossible but it is tricky and not always that reliable. And as above, any traffic that arrives on the main domain from the microsite will be counted as referral traffic which can then skew decision-making for future activity.
Short termism
Many microsites are built with short-term intentions which begs the question, if they are going to be migrated back to the main site, why not start that way and avoid unnecessary migration and redirecting? There is also the risk of previous visitors searching for a domain that no longer exists and being confused when they arrive on the main site via a direct.
All of the above can be overcome with some clever think-arounds but in terms of SEO, there are multiple reasons to steer clear of microsites. By all means, buy up and own multiple domains, if only to prevent competitors from doing so, but in my opinion, you need a damn good reason to deploy them as microsites.
