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
-
We changed our domain, I used the move tool in Google Search Console and I am having our site redirected and go daddy, and now I spoke with someone who suggest we do a 301 redirect for all pages on our site and I’m not sure that’s the correct move.
We just changed our domain name after 15 years. when I bought the new domain name I called Go Daddy and they instructed me to contact my google G sweet admin account and change all of our emails over which I did and then I went into Shopify who is my host and changed my primary domain there and then I went back to Go Daddy and had my old website forwarded to my new site. since then there has been nothing but problems with Google. my product feed from my merchant center account has been suspended three or four times now, I tried to rename and move all of my Google accounts from my old domain to my new one, but I am not an SEO person... after making the changes I have started google chats with analytics department with the merchant center with Google as they all keep saying that it looks fine but I’m not convinced because the product feed keeps getting disapproved. So I posted an ad for help and the Guy I spoke with suggested I do a 301 redirect for every single page on my old site, But I’m concerned that might confuse things further? I’ve already started the move in Google Search console And in Shopify I added the old domain back into the domains section and am having it redirectEd that way too... I guess I’m just looking to know which way I should proceed, any and all advice is warmly welcome thank you in advance Maureen
Conversion Rate Optimization | | TooFast130 -
Breadcrumbs for ecommerce site
We are doing a major overhaul on our site, and we have some questions about URLs, breadcrumbs and ecommerce. Currently, a product can reside in multiple categories, and can have multiple URLs based on how a user navigates to the page. We handle this via canonicals, but it's awful for SEO on many levels. O-U-C-H. The main issue is that a product can reside in multiple categories. At this point, Plan A for our overhaul is that a product URL is always going to be www.domain.com/product-name-sku.html/. Neat and clean, and avoids end-user confusion if they navigate to the product through a category that doesn't match the URL. Plan B: We can anchor a product to a category or subcategory, (www.domain.com/category-name/subcategory-name/product-name-sku.html) but we think that this cuts down on usability as users can navigate to a product through different categories, and the URL may not match the user's navigation. Based on how Google has devalued URLs for ranking purposes, I don't think that there is much of an SEO advantage to Plan B. Am I wrong? A product can show up in multiple categories - for example: www.domain.com/womens-clothing/ www.domain.com/womens-clothing/dresses/ www,domain.com/womens-clothing/dresses/maxidresses/ Category breadcrumbs take care of themselves. What is the best practice to handle the breadcrumb on the product page considering that there are multiple paths a user can take to a product? Options: 1. The breadcrumb on the product page dynamically changes based on how the user navigates to the page. The URL is always fixed as per above, but we change the breadcrumb based on the session. ex: Product: Black Ruffled MuuMuu Home > Womens Clothing > Black Ruffled MuuMuu Home > Womens Clothing > Dresses > Black Ruffled MuuMuu We would be showing Google different breadcrumbs based on how the bot navigates to the page. Are there any issues with this from an SEO perspective as it would seem to provide the better user experience? 2. The breadcrumb on a product page is always fixed. We anchor a product to a category or subcategory and the breadcrumb is always the same no matter how a user navigates to the product. This is simpler from a development perspective, and we are always showing the same breadcrumb to Google. IMHO, this is not as good for usability. ex: Breadcrumb is always: Home > Womens Clothing > Dresses > Black Ruffled MuuMuu regardless of how a user navigates to it. Which way would our ecommerce experts recommend?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | AMHC0 -
I've got one good offer (I think) from one site that i want to advertise my site and i have few questions
Hi guys, I've got one good offer (I think) from one site that i want to advertise my site and i have few
Conversion Rate Optimization | | WayneRooney
questions. How can i test the results of the ads ?
Do i check all the datas only trough Google analytics ?
Can i check the CPM or the CPC with Google analytics ? Any tips or recommended tools will be more then welcome. Thanks guys0 -
Modified broad match vs phrase match strategy - Google Adwords
Hi All, I am looking through a client account that is very mature (10+ years running) on Google AdWords. As soon as it became available, this client adopted a modified broad match (MBM) strategy and has removed all phrase match and exact match keyword types. The account has hundreds of thousands of active keywords. Over the past few years, the CPCs have been rising. While I know that market values of keywords in general have risen consistently year after year, I speculate that this client is actually causing their own prices to go up faster than they should. I have a couple of questions regarding strategy that I am considering that I want to know if anyone else has any experience with... by having many MBM versions of the same keyword, is it possible for cannibalization to occur for most of the variations? Example query: new red running shoes
Conversion Rate Optimization | | dsinger
variations Ad group 1: +red running shoes, +red +running shoes, red +running +shoes, red running +shoes
variations ad group 2: +blue running shoes, +blue +running shoes, blue +running +shoes, blue running +shoes based on the logic of MBM, the possible matches to this query from the available variations are +red running shoes, +red +running shoes, red +running +shoes, red running +shoes, blue +running +shoes, blue running +shoes. So, if the performance of those blue variations trump the more closely related red variations, this searcher may actually see an ad about blue running shoes, even though they have indicated they are more interested in red. in terms of cost, I would anticipate that MBM keywords are more expensive than their phrase match counterparts. can anyone confirm or deny this? My thoughts are that with several years of actual search terms being collected, this client should be able to do a great job of covering almost every variation of keyword that customers have used and create a strong list of phrase match keywords to satisfy all relevant queries. MBM keywords seem like they are a lazy way of getting traffic at a higher cost that can actually cannibalize close variations that exist in the account, causing the wrong ad to be shown based on matching/relevancy and a higher price CPC in the long run. Thoughts?1 -
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 -
Question regarding eCommerce sites, relative URLs and secuirty certificates
We recently installed a new SSL certificate on an ecommerce site. Our IT Director is insisting that all pages on the site must be coded in such a way so that the address bar maintains a green background when a visitor is navigating the site after navigating to a secure page or logging in. I have worked on many ecommerce sites and never has this been an issue. Amazon does not use the green bar....but they are Amazon. In order for this to work, he is insisting that all internal URLs be coded as relative instead of absolute. How bad is this for SEO or does it really not matter that much? How crucial is it for trust and security? Opinions welcome!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | danatanseo0 -
One Domain or Four?
Hi, We are coming to a bit of a crossroads at our company. Our current website www.revolutioninc.co.uk is ranking half decently in some of our main keywords and is moving in the correct direction. However. There is talk of us now producing a different website for each of our services Web Design, Graphic Design, Marketing and Print. I think I see the benefits of doing 4 seperately in terms of bounce rate probably improving, being able to produce a more concentrated amount of content per site, etc. We have a meeting on it tomorrow and I do have a good few key points to discuss regarding the advantages. Initially however, does anybody here have an opinion of the potential pitfalls/benefits of following this route. I'm thinking also in regards to the direction google is heading. Any opinion is appreciated, good or bad, as I want to put as informed decision as possible across.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Revolution_Inc0