Should You Develop a Microsite for SEO? Learn Why and How

If you’re searching for Nike shoes, you might go to Nike.com and browse. But what if you want to know more about Nike as a company? Say you wanted to research their sustainability commitments and practices before you buy your new kicks. In that case, you can visit nike.com/sustainability and find a whole mini-website dedicated to everything Nike and eco-friendly.

Nike’s sustainability hub is a great example of a microsite. It helps a particular audience explore a single topic, with depth and breadth of coverage. It’s easier for people to find the information they’re looking for and explore related topics, too.

Microsites can be a powerful way for B2B brands to reach specific audiences with specific messages. Here’s what you need to know about microsites for SEO.

Developing a microsite SEO strategy

Microsites have a bad reputation in some SEO circles, and it’s true the technique can come off as spammy or convoluted if it’s not done properly. But the right microsite strategy helps everyone:

• Improves the user experience
• Helps people find information easily
• Highlights topics important to your brand
• Helps your audience self-select
• Builds your domain’s authority around a specific area

But let’s start with the basics:

What is a microsite?

A microsite is a small standalone website with a specific focus on a topic, product, campaign, sub-brand or event. They usually have their own subdomain or even a unique url, such as business.att.com or HubSpot’s Website Grader at website.grader.com.

Advantages of microsites for B2B

There are a few key ways that a microsite can improve your site SEO and your customers’ experience:

1. Targeted content. Microsites are highly focused, which helps attract niche audiences and can boost rankings for long-tail keywords.
2. Link building. When microsites are crosslinked with the main website, it helps the SEO of both sites.
3. Enhanced user experience. Microsites encourage users to explore the entire collection of pages, which helps boost time on page, lower bounce rates, and signal to search engines that the content is valuable.
4. Brand authority. Specialized microsites can establish a brand’s authority on a particular topic, with in-depth content that boosts credibility.

Microsites in action: A case study

A TopRank Marketing client has a solution with two distinct audiences: 

1. Individual end users, who might purchase a monthly subscription (B2C)
2. HR leaders, who would purchase a business licenses for their teams (B2B)

It’s easy to see how these two audiences need dramatically different messaging. Trying to reach both with one site was underserving the B2B audience and failing to generate traction.

To better reach the B2B audience, we helped this client develop a microsite focused on the benefits of the solution for teams. We created content aimed at helping this audience, and at  demonstrating the solution’s value.

Ultimately, the microsite helped target the B2B audience more effectively. The site is now ranking in the top 10 for dozens of keywords with B2B-specific intent — a feat that would have been almost impossible without the microsite.

When to create a microsite

Here are a few simple guidelines to help determine whether your audience/message would be best served with a microsite or simply a page on your main site.

1. You’re launching a new product or campaign. If your latest launch has its own messaging, branding, goals or unique audience, it could benefit from a microsite.
2. You’re targeting a new audience. As with the B2C/B2B example, a new audience for your brand could use a clean-slate introduction.
3. You’re testing a new idea or product. Microsites are a good way to soft launch a new service without cluttering the main site.
4. You’re telling a new brand story. As with Nike’s sustainability site, microsites help tell brand stories beyond the products and services you offer.
5. You want to optimize for a subset of keywords. If you have your eye on a juicy collection of long-tail keywords, a microsite can help you rank for them.
6. You have a complex navigation structure on your main site. Convoluted navigation is a bad user experience that can hurt your ranking potential. Microsites are an effective way to get organized.

Developing a microsite SEO strategy

The process for developing a microsite is similar to strategically creating content for your main site, with a few key differences. Follow these steps:

1. Determine your objectives. Set specific goals for the microsite to accomplish.
2. Analyze your audience. Make sure it’s unique enough to warrant a microsite, and explore content and keywords related to this particular audience.
3. Develop your content strategy. Research your keywords as they relate to your audience and refine your topics and subtopics.
4. Create content. Develop your content with an eye toward specificity, depth of coverage and value for the intended audience.
5. Optimize for SEO. Meta descriptions, tags, headers and SCHEMA can all help your content get seen.
6. Publish and promote. Use paid and organic social, influencer activation, and paid search to help launch the site.
7. Measure and optimize. Keep tabs on your site’s performance and adjust as needed.

Microsite challenges to watch out for

As useful as microsites can be, there are a few challenges you’ll need to meet:

1. Keeping the site up to date. It can be challenging to manage multiple microsites. Make sure you have the resources to support what you’re creating.
2. Brand consistency. A microsite should have its own look and feel, but still be recognizable as part of your brand.
3. Duplicate content. It’s important to not cannibalize your main site for microsite traffic. Make sure all microsite content is original and unique.

A microsite with macro impact

When they’re strategically created, deployed and supported, microsites can be a great way to reach a specific audience or promote a new product, service or campaign. 

A microsite makes it easier to target a specific subset of keywords. This helps the site reach a more relevant audience, which helps search engine algorithms see the value of your content. 

Need help building your own microsite SEO strategy? Our SEO team is on the case.