Also called minisites, these would be additional websites that would be focused on a particular branch of your activities. There can be several ways to create those: you can decide to split your website into two separate ones that would target two different types of audiences (one focused on your B2C activities and another one on your B2B activities for example).
They would have a different content and angle. Or you may just decide to create a new website and develop some content for a particular product or service that is already on your main one. For example if you are selling security equipment you may want to create a specific website about CCTV. But what’s the value of doing this, if any? Well it will depend on a few factors and according to these there will be some pros and cons.
1. Your main website is not delivering enough traffic for a particular product or service
Let’s stick to the CCTV example here. Your main website is named after your company name (which is named after yourself for example), you’ve followed all the SEO best practice rules but you still don’t get any traffic on your CCTV pages. You’ve created a lot of them and keep doing so to no avail. Your website is positioned on other products but not this particular one. What should you do?
The main argument against the creation of microsites is that it will cannibalise your main website. But in this particular case you’re not getting any traffic anyway so it looks like you have nothing to lose. You will be able to find a domain name that includes the term cctv (or any other one related to it that’s relevant to your products) and basically restart everything with a new website. All it will take is the writing of new content and the building of your website.
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Buying your domain name
Make sure you spend time researching something that will define your product perfectly. Avoid dashes in your domain name if possible. Browse the internet to check which websites have a good position in search results. You may find that some are for sale, check how much it would cost you to buy those.
Buying an existing website with good ranking would allow you to get listed in Google immediately. You also shouldn’t hesitate to pay a little more for a domain name if it’s already taken, especially if you feel that domain name is perfect for you. If your business is based in the UK make sure you buy a .co.uk domain name as it will help users identify you as a business from the United Kingdom.
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Content creation
You will need to write some brand new content for your microsite as you just can’t reuse some content from your main website. Make sure that the new content is only relevant to the domain name you bought. For example if you’re a vending company and decided to build a website about hot drink vending machines for example, make sure your content is focused on that.
2. Your website is doing ok but you’d like even more traffic
That’s when microsites can be dangerous. Because you need to remember that they will be time consuming to build and update (think about link building too). And you may end up neglecting your main website. So before you decide to create minisites, check what resource you have available. If you realise you won’t be able to work on your main website anymore, allocate your resources to it.
A microsite will only be valuable if you keep maintaining the main one, which will be older – a factor in Google’s algorithm. So in conclusion a microsite will only help your business if you keep updating your main website.
