How to Host Microsites: Mission Critical or Six of One / Half Dozen of the Other?
-
Hello, fellow Mozzers! Been racking my brain. Thanks for your help on this one!
I am in the process of putting together several microsites for our marketing agency. The sites feature similar theme and design elements, but are focused on delivering a customized industry-specific visitor experience with unique navigation, brand messaging, services, case studies, etc.
I am struggling with whether I should host as entirely separate websites, as subdomains of the parent site, or as separate WP installs in subfolders of the main domain.
I have been leaning toward the sub-folder option to share domain authority and keep our SEO efforts consolidated. But I am also concerned that the microsite "home pages" will underperform as sub-folder pages, versus being an actual home page of a unique domain or sub-domain.
Is this a six-of-one or half-dozen of the other situation, or are there some important considerations I'm missing here?
Thank you for your help here!
-
Happy to help, good luck!
-
Thanks, Dave. Great points. Thanks for the feedback!
-
Thanks, Justin. Good advice. The important thing to me was the ability to deliver unique brand and user experience, including navigation menu, content, colors, logo. I've been putting things together on my own thus far without the technical programming know how, but now that you bring this up, I am sure that my developer will be able to help me build this out under a single theme and install, no problem. Appreciate the thought! Andrew
-
If the main website is in WordPress, I recommend creating a new page template in your existing WP installation, and using that to create your landing pages and microsites.
Adding another subdomain or a separate WordPress install is only going to give you headaches. Analytics, updates, plugins, etc., all get more complicated when you do that. It may seem like a quick fix, but you'd only be making trouble for yourself later.
Better to spend the time up front creating new page templates on your existing WP domain.
Here's an article on creating new page templates: http://codex.wordpress.org/Page_Templates
Here are a couple of articles on creating new sidebars:
-
Hey Alaniz,
I would run the subfolder route for two reasons.
1. Branding. You can leverage all of you brand equity under one domain but still let people know that you specialize in marketing for the listed industries. Your case studies and blog will show you know your stuff. People will probably think each site is a separate business. You will want your customers to know you service other industries so they can (hopefully) refer others. So maybe you do a killer job marketing for the legal side and the client has a buddy in medical and they can easily refer the friend to the one website.
2. SEO time and effort. Starting from scratch on six sites in competitive markets will take some serious time and resources to get them to generate traffic. Focusing on one domain will pass the link equity on to the other pages. I would rather manage one site versus six.
I love seeing strategy questions on here, those are always the tough ones.
-
Hi, Eugene. Thanks for the response. I'll try to explain it better.
I would like to create a website experience that is specific to several sub-specialties of our marketing agency (tech, medical, legal, etc). Each "microsite" has unique brand messaging, navigation, styling, case studies, blog.
I am trying to figure out the best practice for hosting and site architecture. For instance, here are my considerations:
Main Parent Site: www.abcmarketing.com
Separate Sites Option: www.abcmedicalmarketing.com
Sub-domain Option: medical.abcmarketing.com
Sub-Folder Option: abcmarketing.com/medicalThe Sub-folder option seems to be the best way to consolidate efforts and maintain authority for one domain, as you said. But I'm not sure if there are any other considerations that I'm missing here. For instance, will the sub-folder hosted microsites rank as well as if they were hosted and maintained separately? Is there anything that Google will potentially not like about this? Or is this simply and clearly the best way to proceed?
Thanks for your help!
-
Not sure I'm following you, but I don't think it's ever a good idea to have different micro sites hosted all on the same host with the same IP. Why not build up the domain authority for ONE domain. I remember herding Google not liking the new subdomain craze too, but that was just on a podcast. Sorry I don't understand your question better.
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
-
Hosted content vs Dedicated website (for large piece of content)
There is one question that keep bugging us and for which we are looking for a logical answer – to put it short, in which context(s) is it preferable to publish original content on a company website vs on a dedicated external platform with its own URL? To give a little more details: we an education company that provides languages course abroad and that functions like a specialised travel agency. Each trip is very specific – it depends on people's language level, objectives, budget, etc. – so we provide tailor-made advice for each of our students. Our site is not an e-commerce site, and a typical call-to-action is a request for a 1-to-1 interview with one of our agents, or a quote request for a language trip project. The top conversion for us is an enrolment for a language course abroad. We have a corporate websites structure where we have 1 website per locale where we operate, which means 14 websites in 7 different languages. We produce smaller pieces of content for these websites in a dedicated section – the rest of the website being mostly a presentation of our products, services and destinations – but here we intend to create a very large Quiz which will be based on multiple audio files. The content will be translated into multiple languages (likely 10 different languages) and will require some rather heavy development. We intend to add sections for scoreboards, stats, a log-in section (probably Facebook), etc. This sounds to us like something we should host on a specific URL, but then how can we make the most of the SEO benefits that we will (hopefully) get with such content? We plan to have an about section where we explain a little bit who we are, where we will probably link back to our corporate websites, but of course we want our project to live for itself and to be as far from commercial as possible – while still making the most of the SEO benefits. How can we do this in the most subtle / logical way? Would it be better to host our Quiz on our corporate domains? Thanks in advance for your advice. Maëlle
Branding | | ESL_Education0 -
Am I better off buying a .com with a stopword or a .net / .org without?
I'm trying to decide between three domains:
Branding | | Andrew_Mac
mydomain.com
domain.net
domain.org What's the latest word on if there is an actual SEO impact to the stopword or whether it is just ignored entirely? Further, does anyone have any insight into whether any of these domains are seen as more credible (from a searcher's standpoint)? Thanks so much!0 -
In the Google search results, the company name (with the drop down arrow) next to the result URL is incorrect. The company being displayed here is a company we acquired many years back. How do I adjust/fix this?
When I search any term for my organization, we are getting good results BUT the company name, next to the results URL is of an orgnization we acquired many years back and not the name of our company. The URL is correct page JUST the company name next to this URL is incorrect on the Google search results page. How do I go about changing so the company name next to the URL ?
Branding | | DigitalNTT0 -
Which domain/subdomain strategy would be better?
I have multiple subdomain based news website. Each subdomain is in the format languge1.newsdomain.com, language2.newsdomain.com etc. These are not mere translation of one site into another but giving content tailored for the language and culture of the audience it serves. In essence they are related but different. When it comes to "english" I have two options. Option1. Create english.newsdomain.com using the same format and use the main www.newsdomain.com as a launching pad (navigation site) which allows the user to choose language and goto appropriate site. This gives the advantage of creating a common brand of newsdomain.com for all languages. There won't be any other content on this www.newsdomain.com Option2. Use www.newsdomain.com for english content and only allow the list of other sites as footer or part of menu. This gives the advantage of having main domain with content (and links and other benefits) but makes it a bit difficult for users who do not speak english, to find their destination. Any thoughts which is better or worse?
Branding | | Maayboli0 -
Should we use one domain with product-specific sub-domains or separate domains per product?
We are resellers of 4 separate products. Currently we have numerous different websites promoting each product, not all of them use a URL which has any real link to our business - it's only when you land on the page that it contains brand images, etc. We are in the process of redesigning and rebranding, and want to know what would be the best course of action to take in terms of domain registration. This is what we have currently, for example: - www.accounts-solutions.co.uk - This site deals with the resale and support of a branded accounts package. www.software-accounts-systems.co.uk - This site deals with the resale and support of a second branded accounts product. In terms of moving forward with new domains, which are going to contain our business name, our options are as follows: - OPTION 1 - www.our-business-name.co.uk/product1/etc, www.our-business-name.co.uk/product2/etc, www.our-business-name/product3/etc where all products are given separate sub-domains within our main business page. OPTION 2 - www.our-business-name-product1.co.uk/etc, www.our-business-name-product2.co.uk/etc, www.our-business-name-product3.co.uk/etc where each product we resell is given it's own separate domain entirely. Does anyone think one direction over another would give any benefits in terms of SEO, or would it not matter as long as each site was well optimised with a solid content and social strategy? My initial preference is for the first option, if only because of the continuity in terms of having one main company website with each product listed in sub-domains. Each landing page would obviously be optimised for each specific product/keyword, etc. so, from a user point of view, there shouldn't be any confusion between separate products. Also, would it be recommended to install 301 redirects from our existing www.accounts-solutions.co.uk, etc pages to the relevant new sites? Thanks, John
Branding | | HBPGroup0 -
Video Hosting and SEO
Generally speaking self hosting of video is good for SEO. But if a client has a weekly/daily webshow that they will be launching (from scratch), how should we handle the hosting? Is onsite still better? Should we use Youtube to start and gain traction and than swtich once we have built viewership or Should we use self hosted video and than post it to Youtube at a later date?
Branding | | greenergrassmarketing0 -
Using Multiple Locations for Google Business/Maps
Hey MOZers, I currently work for a company with several other offices in other countries. Is it possible to set-up Google 'Business' and Google 'Maps' pages so when a user in a given country queries 'our business' on either Google 'Search' or Google 'Maps' they will receive the relevant business information for that country. For example, if an internet user in Canada enters a query for 'our business' in Canada (and we have an office in Canada) is there anyway to set up our Google Business page and Google Maps page so that user receives the contact information for the Canada office, rather than the US office? Conversely, if someone in the United States enters a search query for 'our business' is there a way to set it up so that the user receives our address in the states?
Branding | | NiallSmith0 -
Google Displays Domain / URL Above Description?
I am seeing a new SERP format from Google. (new for me at least) In the past the title tag would display as the first line of a listing, followed by description and domain / URL. Today I see the domain / URL as the second line. This is placing an emphasis on "Who". If you have a big brand or a great URL this might be helpful to your CTR. Are you seeing this? What do you think of it?
Branding | | EGOL0