Microsites vs. one site

[ptdodge]

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

[JaneCopland]

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.

[AlanMosley]

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.

[ptdodge]

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!

[Vacatia_SEO]

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.

[tdawson09]

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).