Are Microsites a good idea

[wianno168]

I am a plastic surgeon with a website and active blog which has done well over the past 7 years.

I use my blog to feature specific procedures such as Breast Augmentation or Tummy Tuck.

Should I continue to just use my blog to generate traffic or consider a microsite specific to a procedure?

My concern is that google may consider the microsite a black hat technique.

[wianno168]

Thank you for your help-=good advice

[wianno168]

Thank you for good advice.

[wianno168]

Thank you very much

[wianno168]

Thank you for your answer-good advice

[wianno168]

Thank you very much-good advice

[DarinPirkey]

Google won't consider that black hat if you do it right.  I am not really a fan of microsites but they do have their advantages.  The reason most microsites don't work is because people just duplicate the content from their main blog to their microsite which will be considered duplicate content and it won't rank.

The reason I am against them is because Google has made a transition to ranking brands more and more.  If you build a microsite you'll need to SEO that too and ranking them can take some time.  Getting high quality, high authority relevant links is hard enough and at what point do you start to dilute your efforts.

I prefer the strategy of categories in my blogs.  For instance you could have a category called breast augmentation and one called tummy tuck (www.example.com/breast-augmentation/blog-post-goes-here)  This will help keep all of your links on your main domain which will help you build your domain authority and also, people can just follow the categories they care about.  Any link to your subpage will help your domain metrics and that is always a good thing.  Also, you'll be able to get your main keyword in every URL that way too.

The other side of that is that a microsite could potentially take up another SERP position and therefore help you get more clients.  You'll have to double your efforts (if not more) and if you get that authority high enough, any link to your site will help your main site rank better.

But, like I said, I'm not a fan of microsites.  I want people to go to my business and help my mains sites metrics.  Just my two cents

Darin.

[EGOL]

I used to have lots of microsites, then built one big site that beat all of them.

Google search results pit page-against-page with the overall strength of the site also counting towards the rankings.  So, it is better to attack with one battleship instead of ten potato guns.

[GPainter]

The reason Google may consider them black hat is because they are, they are not recommended. I would recommend you work on creating a better main site that has what the user are looking for. If they are already landing on your site for the mentioned terms then you should be okay. Google's job is to bring up the most relevant results for a search term - make your site the most relevant for that search term.

Don't try to cheat Google, go with Google!

Having said all that I do know of some people with micro sites that can perform but best practice would mean it's not recommended. Good luck.