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With Google’s latest update, Penguin, many webmasters find themselves scrambling to find a safe link building method. It’s not easy to get free quality backlinks from other sites, especially from within your niche. Fortunately, action-oriented microsite design can help create a quality backlink structure.
What is a microsite?
A microsite is a mini website that deals with one specific aspect of your business. It is usually an offshoot of a larger business website but has its own URL and stands as its own site. An example would be a building contractor website where the contractor has a number of different house plans and has a separate website for each design that it sells.
How do microsites work?
When you have identified a niche market, a microsite can be built to target the specific niche with a specific message or offer. A business’ main website will give a general overview of all products, services, or information. Microsites break that information into targeted leads by promoting one specific thing to a specific audience.
Tips to develop a microsite:
Using an extra domain and copying content from your main website to create a page isn’t going to give you a successful website. Your microsite needs to be unique. It should be a complete website of its own accord. It should be built with a target audience in mind and enough unique, quality, updated content to generate sales or leads focused on the specific niche. This means that your microsite will likely have numerous pages, navigation, sub categories, etc. All normal SEO rules apply to the microsite, including creating inbound links and having a marketing strategy. The site needs to look professional and be an expert.
Many webmasters have a number of domain names registered but they don’t use them to their full potential. Instead of using these as parking sites they could be set up as microsites to be used for backlinking.
Benefits to microsites:
One of the best strategies to deploy content on the internet is through the use of microsites. Many microsites are geared towards sale promotion so you have to offer great content that has value for the targeted audience. The content needs to be relevant and it will help attract leads. When a microsite targets a small niche it reaches out to a specific group of potential customers. When you are able to direct interested customers to a specific messaging and content about the product or service instead of dumping them on the main page of your website, where they might get lost, you will see a higher conversion rate.
A site with a specific aim will focus on that topic and all the links to it are coming from sites with an interest in that topic. This causes the site to become an expert, or authority. Google loves authority sites and so do other search engines so they promote them to a higher page rank. This is a great benefit to having a microsite, they frequently reach search rankings quickly because of their targeted nature.
The importance of a microsite that has been optimized for search engines is that it can drive traffic from search engines into your site. These visitors come organically and naturally so it doesn’t cost you every time someone clicks through.
Other benefits of microsites include:
- Help in branding a product or service
- Contains important details about a product or service
- Dedicated messaging and high relevance for visitors
- Increased keyword visibility and rankings due to the targeted nature
- Increased page rank for main website due to links from microsite
- Can be created quickly which makes them great for events or seasonal promotions
- Helps grab the audiences’ attention more than a more generic business website
