Microsites vs. one site
-
My client has created a product that he wants to market to two, very different, audiences. The goal is to funnel them through the site and get them to purchase. My question is about the best SEO strategy on how to do this effectively.
Since they are distinct audiences with little in common we've recommended building two microsites, and optimizing each with unique content and different keyword focus. I realize it will be harder to optimize two sites rather than one, but it seems to make sense from a user perspective. But once the users goes to a "non-audience specific" page, like any page that is about the product or company and not about the audience, should we build yet a third website that houses the "company/product pages" and channel the conversions there in order to avoid having duplicate content on the two other sites? Or should we put the same "company pages" on both the Audience A and Audience B websites, only vary the text so it doesn't look like duplicate content. Or is the microsite strategy flawed all together?
Please keep in mind this is a brand new product and it has national scope. There is no local focus. We will be building their rankings entirely from scratch. I REALLY appreciate any insights you may have. We have been going around and around about this. Thanks
-
Agree with the others here, two or three sites definitely are a lot harder to maintain, and a properly-structured website can cater to different types of audiences, even when they vary a lot. You'll want to be very careful with the UX and perhaps work with some conversion rate optimisation people as well to segregate the audiences and not confuse the sales process for either, but this should be possible, especially if you focus your marketing for each audience to drive traffic to pages where there is no initial cross-over (shared navigation, etc.). I am guessing since I have not seen either product or preliminary site (if there is one), but I believe that one site would be better given that there will be shared pages, such as company information.
If you were to create two sites, I suggest canonicalising the duplicate content to one version of the site, most likely the one with the larger user base or higher potential return. E.g., www.site.com/company-information and www.b2bsite.com/company-information are canonicalised to www.site.com/company-information if www.site.com is the primary business interest.
-
I have 3 sites selling the same product,
BUT I got my first site to the top of Bing and Google for all my keywords before I bothered making a second site, and like wise I waited till I was dominating the serps before I bothered with a third.
Get your first site to rank before trying to be tricky.
-
Makes sense. I forgot to mention that each audience type will have it's own blog. Is it okay to house more than one blog under a single domain? Thanks for the feedback, guys!
-
What you are describing sounds like a mess to maintain. Three potential sites? If you're interested in usability, create one site and build it so it speaks to the personas you're targeting. Like bstone said, build one and put all your effort behind that site. By splitting up the sites, you will be doubling the effort and neither will reach their full potential. In some cases you will even be competing against yourself.
-
My suggestion would be to stay with one site, and set up pages or categories within your site to address different audiences. Building more than one site will require you to do backlinking and social channel strategies for each one. Build the mother ship and point everything there. Good examples to follow are Amazon, Walmart (Who has recently jumped into the rankings over the last few years).
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Help: Trouble converting customers with new adwords campaign for a new site
I have just launched my brand new e-commerce site www.zenory.co.nz We are wanting to expand global as you can see we have com.au and also .com but due to our min budget we had to start with NZ first for organic search and a min monthly budget on adwords which doesn't come close to what our competitors are paying. Really is it worth paying out our limited budget with adwords? Or should be put that into ranking organic search. While we have only just started our adwords PPC campaign and I think it has only been roughly two weeks - We have had around 18 people sign up, to which we have a 3 step process, however, we are struggling to convert and complete a transaction which customer places credit card details in step 3. Does anyone have any ideas around how we could better optimize or perhaps make any suggestions? Our competitors spend rather large amounts of up to 3000k - 300k per month on adwords, and there is just no competing with that. Any suggestions I would definitely be open to... Thanks alot
Conversion Rate Optimization | | edward-may0 -
Help with ecommerce duplicate pages and SEO advice(magento base site)
Hi, We have a magento build site (www.mokee.eu) and are selling our own branded goods. So far it is a very limited range of products. It's 1 baby crib in 5 variations. We recently started getting more sales from the site, so I started to look a bit more into optimising our site. I rewrote item name, created better descriptions, added meta titles and description etc. and subscribed to the MOZ analytics platform to understand a bit better ways to improve things up. From what I saw we have a big issue of duplicated content because our product pages are the same and only the product colour changes, which is something google apparently doesn't like However it is important for us that each colour get referenced by google so people who search for grey cot can find a picture of our grey cot etc... Also I was thinking to create only on multi variation page with all colour but when you have only 1 product to sell it might look a bit empty on the site. 1- Do you guys have some advise on how to go round this issue? 2- Do you have any other advise for my site in particular to optimise things and actually do you think i should be worried at all with such a small catalogue? Thanks Sam
Conversion Rate Optimization | | mokeestore0 -
Where I can place a banner/message in my site telling I have a new website?
Where I should place a banner or a message in my old site to tell user that I have a new website? Thanks in advance!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | esiow20130 -
Sales pages or one site?
New client in the pensions market and they want to launch a new product. There are They have asked for a site build but my question is Is there a benefit to writing unique copy for this one product on each micro site/sales page and focus on a particular keyword, with an email capture for lead generation and also a link back to the main site. Buy domains with targeted keywords in them : www.workplacepensions.co.uk www.auto-opt-in-pensions.co.uk etc? Thoughts please as it will change my proposal 😉
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Agentmorris0 -
Contact Forms Vs Email Enquiries
This is a usability question more than SEO but I thought this community would be the one to ask. Are completed conversion rates generally higher for contact forms or email enquiries? I try to encourage our clients to have short contact forms where possible to ensure the first contact (ask questions later). Personally an email seems like a giant daunting and potentially irrelevant enquiry that could get lost in the plethora of spam emails flying around. Also half the time I start the email and then give up.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | SoundinTheory0 -
Conversion Rate - site feedback
Hi We gave a website a bit of a facelift last nov with the aim of increasing its position within Search Engines and getting it to begin making sales. The site: www.funkyfootstools.com is now moving in the right direction for its keyphrases, footstools and ottomans although it still needs some work. The issue I have is that from the visitors that come to the site, the stats prove they have a look around, they are just not purchasing - I am not sure if this is because of the layout, ie. usability or if there is something else. Any ideas & feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Carl
Conversion Rate Optimization | | keane-1145170 -
How to you determine what a good CPA is on an ecommerce site?
Do you calculate shipping, warehouse cost, cost of goods into your CPA? Lets say my current CPA is $20 and average order is $100. Its 20% of each order cost goes to lets say ppc, seo, email or affiliate. Do I include cost of shipping lets say its $7.00 and cost of goods are $40.00 I end up with a profit of $33 and that doesn't include taxes, salary, warehouse cost ect. *this is all hypothetical, Im trying to see if my real CPA is inline or I should work on decreasing it. Any thoughts? Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | perytestusr0 -
Ideal product page conversion/retention rate for eCommerce sites
Hi SEOmoz-ers, I was wondering if anyone has data regarding product page abandonment rate (% of potential customers that leave the site after seeing product pages) for websites like Overstock, REI or Zappos? As you may know the above mentioned sites do an exceptional job with product pages. It would be helpful to know what some of the leaders in this space are achieving in terms of conversion rate. What is your personal opinion about this? Thanks,
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Kush_VMI
Kush0