Today we wrapped up our first ever SEOmoz training seminar - covering topics from keyword research to technical issues to search algorithms and social media. Despite the 7 straight hours of speaking on stage, I feel pretty good - the people in attendance appeared to have a terrific time and our after-hours party was still going strong when I left an hour ago.
One of the most frequently asked questions during the seminar was around building microsites or leveraging microsite strategies for SEO. I know that Stephan Spencer has written about the pros and cons of Microsites on SearchEngineLand, but tonight I wanted to briefly cover why I personally believe that microsites (or any secondary sites for that matter) are almost universally a mistake.
- Search Algorithms Favor Large Authoritative Domains
Take a piece of great content about a topic and toss it onto a small, Mom+Pop website - point some external links to it, optimize the page and the site for the target terms and get it indexed. Now, take that exact same content and place it on Wikipedia or CNN.com or even SEOmoz - you're virtually guaranteed that the content on the large, authoritative domain will outrank the content on the small niche site. The engines' current algos favor sites that have built trust and authority, consistency and history. - Multiple Sites Split the Benefits of Links
I often use the following illustration to show how a single good link pointing to a page on a domain positively influences the entire domain and every page on it:
Because of this phenomenon, it's much more valuable to have any link you can possibly get pointing to the same domain to help boost the rank and value of the pages on it. Having content or keyword-targeted pages on other domains that don't benefit from the links you earn to your primary domain only creates more work. - 100 Links to Domain A ≠ 100 Links to Domain B + 1 Link to Domain A (from Domain B)
In the diagram above, you can see my take on how earning lots of links to page "G" on a separate domain is far less valuable than earning those same links to a page on the primary domain. Due to this phenomenon, even if you interlink all of the microsites or multiple domains you build, it still won't be close to the value you can get from those links if they were to point directly to the primary domain. - A Large, Authoritative Domain Can Host A Huge Variety of Content
Niche websites frequently limit the variety of their discourse and content matter, while broader sites can target a wider range of focii. This is valuable not just for targeting the long tail of search and increasing potential branding and reach, but also for viral content, where a broader focus is much less limiting than that of a niche focus. - Time & Energy Is Better Spent on a Single Property
If you're going to pour your heart and soul into webdev, design, usability, user experience, site architecture, SEO, public relations, branding, etc. you're going to want the biggest bang for your buck. Splitting your attention, time and resources on multiple domains dilutes that value and doesn't let the natural order of building on your past successes on a single domain help you out.
So when do I suggest using niche sites or microsites?
- When you own a specific keyword search query domain - e.g. if you own "usedtoyotatrucks.com," you might do very well to pull in search traffic for the specific term "used toyota trucks" with a microsite.
- When you plan to sell the domains - it's very hard to sell a folder or even a subdomain, so this strategy is understandable if you're planning to churn the domains in the second-hand market.
- As Ciaran pointed out in the comments, if you're a major brand building a "secret" or buzz-worthy microsite, it can be useful to use a separate domain (however, you really should 301 them back to your main site after the campaign is over so the link juice continues to provide long term benefit - just as the mindshare and branding do in the offline world).
I know there are others in the search marketing and Internet marketing fields who feel very differently, and that's great, but my personal experience has led me to believe that sticking with one domain (or, if you have 50 domains, 301'ing them all to your favorite) is a better move in the long run.
What do you think? Do you ever run multiple domains in the same sector? How have you seen that strategy benefit your overall reach, income, success?
Whilst I tend to agree with Rand's comments on this (and have said so when it's been written about in the past), I can still see the reasoning behind setting up microsites, and that is generally around specific marketing campaigns.
Over here in the UK at the moment there is a lot of buzz around an ad for chocolate featuring a drumming gorilla (no, really); for this campaign Cadbury's (or their ad agency more likely) set up a microsite which features nothing but the ad and details of how it was made etc..
Whilst this site is probably generating millions of links which could help their main site in terms of SEO, it is unlikely that a brand as well known as Cadbury's, which sells products not exactly designed for e-commerce, really needs to worry unduly about SEO.
And in cases like these, where the campaign are all about branding or viral content, I can understand why people set-up microsites. What I can't understand (and what I was talking to a colleague about yesterday) is why companies then allow these sites to become orphans, unloved& with their link potential ignored.
By all means set up the microsite (if there really is a good reason for it) but for God's sake 301 it when the campaign is over!
Tis a great advert though.
Most likely reason in my opinion: after marketing department/ad agency has created a masterpiece and it's bringing in traffic, they have to move on to the next greatest/latest idea. Both in the in-house and agency environments, you get paid more (and held accountable) for coming up and executing fresh ideas, rather then wrapping up a venture. That's why there always will be room for small nimble players who can do it efficiently and don't leave anything out.
thats why 301 301 301... should be the rule for old domains/sites no longer used - BUT we should make sure that there is some related content on the page its being 301'ned to....(e.g...history of the campaign etc...) Its just good user experience..
@eSherpa: Definitely - I know why it happens, I just don't understand it. It's pure folly...
Ciaran - excellent point, I actually added it into the post. :)
Thanks Rand - glad I could bring something to the party (even if it was a gorilla playing Phil Collins).
Here's the ad for anyone outisde the UK btw...
I saw that commercial but in USA, isn't the one that used Phil Collins's song? I didn’t remember it was a chocolate ad. I think microsites on that cases are used to test and measure ad results.
Thanks Rand. I'm printing this and papering my executives offices with them. Maybe then they'll get it. Nah, if they paid you $10k to tell them this, they'd listen. *sigh*
But really, thanks. Great post.
Put copies in the restrooms taped to the stall door - I'll read anything written there :)
incidentally, i need to go make a phone call ....
Microsites work for PPC, where you can bid on the same keyword and get double your shelf space.
I think you can double bid even if you have a subdomain - no need for a complete microsite... ;-)
I am intrigued by this concept of using sub-domains as I might be a bridge between the two schools of thought.
Does anyone know if microsite.mymainsite.com accrues authority back to mymainsite.com?
Will a sub-domain on a reasonably high authority site spend less time in the sandbox? Will links coming into the sub-domain site pass authority to the main site?
I'm really curious if anyone (including Rand!) has thoughts on this.
In my experience, it depends... Some subdomains seem to inherit all of the main site's trust, and others not so much. Hence, I usually try to stick with subfolders unless there's a good reason not to.
Well, I don't think it really should be this way. Niche sites are sometimes made to make money, but often they are made because holes exist in content currently. In gaming, for example, a gaming network site will be you in the search results everyday, but have out-dated content for a particular game. They should get the position if they have the most updated content, but when a site hasn't been updated in two years and it still beats you out, it's very frustrating. SE's pay too much attention to authority sometimes.
I think you're absolutely correct from a technical point of view. But I think the value of niche sites comes from a different area.
I work for a company where we used to have one big site for all our products (a huge range of products, with multiple different niche markets). We sold widgets, whatsits, etc. Widget customers waren't interested in buying whatsits and vice versa - it's a different market with no overlap.
Getting relevant Widget sites to link to the one big site was difficult - they told us it was too generic, that only a fraction of it would be of interest to their visitors etc.
We then launched over 30 niche sites, each one specialising in one market, such as just Widgets. The non-commercial Widget sites and Widget blogs loved the Widget Niche Site we'd created - they (nearly) all linked to it immediately because it was highly relevant to their visitors. And most importantly our Widget customers liked the Widget Niche Site because the products they wanted to buy were much easier to find - because every product on the site was a Widget!
So, while technically one big site ranks higher than a number of niche site. a niche site can act as far better link bait. While having multiple sites does split the benefit of links (as you rightly say), I think that one big site attracts far fewer natural links than multiple niche sites.
We now get almost as many quality incoming links to each niche site as we had going to the one big site.
Obviously this worked for our market - your mileage may vary.
I had a similar experience where one site covered a wide variety of remotely related material. Analytics showed that many searchers were landing on the site from long tail searches that were unrelated to any of the content. Bounce rates were high, and conversions were low.
Very soon after spinning off to multiple sites with more focused themes total traffic nearly doubled, conversion rates went up, and bounce rates went down.
I'm sure that Rand is absolutely correct, but anecdotally it would seem that in some cases the theme of a site can be stretched too far, and overall relevancy can suffer.
That is particularly true in relation to UK medical searches - a portal I worked on had excellent SERP's results, but bounce rates were high - it seems that the portal wasnt good at convincing people that the service provided was a good fit. The minute we set up a micro site for some of those keywords, emails and calls started flowing in.
Very often people dont want solutions from teams/companies offereing a range ofservices, but rather specialise in the exact service they are looking for - but this is just in my experience.
DrDave - My experience has been similar to yours. While I agree with Rand in that a single authority site has many ranking benefits, topic specific smaller sites can provide greater conversion rates. Why?
In general I think the best approach is a combination of both worlds: a large authority site and several smaller sites that are designed as pre-selling weapons for greater conversion rates. In the end it all depends on your particular situation, though.
Paul, great point.
One more related argument for having a separate site is this:
When we started a blog for my startup (https://www.hubspot.com), we debated whether this should be on our main domain or on a new domain. We elected to use a new domain (https://www.smallbusinesshub.com) for one reason:
We thought people would be much more likely to pay attention to and link to a blog that was not directly attached to a corporate identity. Since we were disciplined about not using the blog as a strong "sales" tool (more to establish though leadership in our market), I think this worked well.
Now that we've built some readership (the early days are the hardest), we're considering merging the blog back into our corporate domain via a 301.
I am right there with Rand 95% of the time. For the other 5% It's really all dependant on the situation. There are certain types of content that just don't mix and there are limits to how much work a person can do.
When I look at a competitve niche for the first time I think to myself, how can I dominate it's serps. With the segmentation of Google SERPS there is less opportunity for a single site to rank. Let's say for example you have an informational site for credit repair. Maybe 4-5 spots are availible for sites that Google deems as informational in nature. The others are usually commercial in nature. Google is segmenting it's results to try and offer the widest range of possible results for searchers and ensure they are getting the type of information they desire.
So that means as an informational site owner, I don't have to rank in the top 10 to get a first page ranking, I have to rank within the top 5 of my segment to get a first page ranking. So here is where the opportunity really lies. If I want to dominate a market where I have a comercial interest, I'm probably going to build 2 sites. One informational and the other commercial.
In the end it all boils down to resources. If you have a team of copywriters and developers, your probably gonna mix it up a little with multiple sites in the same niche to try and dominate the serps for that niche (especially short tail). Also if the capital is availible, buying your way into additional sites that need just a little extra love to rank has been popular with such companies like Monster.com in an effort to dominate both job and education related verticals.
For most independant webmasters or small businesses one site is the way to go but if you have the resources, 2 or 3 sites on the front page of Google is better than one :D
I recently had a client receive some very negative press. Pretty much lies and abuse from the media actually. We used some of the smaller blog sites we run on the same topic to outrank the news stories. So even though he has the #1 and #2 results, we were able to use the blogs to outrank the news agencies and push the negative press down. That's one reason we like to keep a few micro sites around once we have the top ranking for the main site.
It's only valuable in high risk businesses of course. The average site probably doesn't need that strategy.
As anyone knows search engines are like women and have moods. What if a search engines feels like banning you? Are you ready to godown completely?
Do not put all your eggs in one basket ... rings a bell?
Keep things separate unless you are bleached
white hat and youhave connections upstairs.
As the editor has ;)Â
All Eggs in one basket, very valid point.
I totally agree with this. However i own several sites, the other ones I use for testing.
<nitpick>Did you mean Stephan Spencer or you got the ink to SEL wrong? :-)</nitpick>
Good catch, Antonio - my mistake.
In theory, and from personal experience, I can tell you that building the biggest and best site you can is well worth the effort if your intent is to create a legit company/site selling legit products, services, or information (as opposed to arbitrage, spam, thin aff sites, etc.).
Rand has listed a few reasons to work on building one core site, but I wanted to echo that I believe the most important one for your SEO efforts is definitely TRUST. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on which camp you are in, trust (trust rank) is built up over the course of years so you'll need to be patient. Sure, if your name is as hot as Facebook, myspace or Skype it can take less time, but that is not typical for most of us.
Once you've established trust (trust rank) from the SEs, you will be able to get your newly added content to rank so fast it'll make your head spin. This is something you simply won't be able to pull off as quickly using micro sites, if ever.
However, I would also like to add to Rand's list of reasons to consider using a microsite.
Enjoy!
I think it can go either way. Having control of seperate websites with high PR counts can be nice also when you are launching a new website to give it some impact in the index. Personally I like a little of both to mix things up.
Dal, for most people the sheer amount of time needed to build a strong brand and earn trust makes it nearly impossible to allocate enough much-needed time to any other. You could buy existing high ranking sites; that would work. (:
Sorry, I gotta disagree on this one.
While from a pure SEO perspective, what Rand is saying makes sense, this is dead, dead wrong from a larger marketing perspective.
Since SEO is a tactic, and marketing the is the strategy that SEO is supporting, you have to consider more variables.
In some cases, sure, create one huge site. But in others, themed microsites are amazingly powerful tools.
I'm not trying to split hairs here. But I don't want to see folks running off and shutting down viable microsites, either.
I think you are spot on for Big Box Brands. However, there are far more SMBs than there are Big Box Brands. For example, P&G should have many microsites to appropriately segment their products. Their CORE site, if corretly built, should merely funnel visitors (i.e. IR, Toiletries, Food, etc.) to the appropriate destination. The more typical smaller company/site, however, first has to establish a core brand before they go about dreaming up microsites. As such, both you and Rand are correct with your thoughts/perspective.
While we can say that it is "usually" better to have one comprehensive site rather than several niche ones, lets not forget that it is still quite possible to be successful with niche sites. The folks over at Eden Creative Communities (creators FlashDen, Freelance Switch, NorthxEast) seem to have the magic touch. I don't think their sites would work as well if they were all under the same domain.
interseting and very informative article.... i like the idea of being big
I am struggling with this concept. I was planning to create a single site that covers all subjects. A kind of Answers for all site.
I really want to proceed with the all-in-one approach. Each niche will have it's own folder and category.
With all things equal can I create an all-in-one site and make it a success?
All-in-one meaning all topics business, parenting, sports and so on ... Basically a directory style site.
Again, does anyone here have an all-in-one type site that is working well for them?
Does the all emcompassing site take longer to obtain traffic?
Here are just a few questions you can ask yourself to help better determine if a topic deserves its own website:
p.s. Yes, each choice also has optimization advantages and disadvantages, but I kept this thought separate so you'd focus on what's ultimately going to be better for your audience.
great article. helped me convince ppl in my company to settle for fewer sites than creating an army of websites.
Wow!
Make sense sorta... interesting insight though.
Good thing I am doing the right kind of linking.
Just like you advice to...
Thanks!
Great post.
Not sure I follow the cadbury's ad argument. They should have deffintely kept this as part of the main site or a subdomain. As it stands they have to use PPC to promote that domain, while every crappy blog outranks them in the main results.
I'm all for big is best when it comes to search. To add to all the great points already listed, personalisation and making a site sticky by being more comprehensive is another reason.
I have launched 2 new pages in my website, both related to the domain but not the same product. I decided to do it inside the website domain because, not only are related, but the reasons Rand outlined on the post. I though about the good things for the domain to be associated with those pages and at the same time how important for those pages will be to be inside the domain in order to be indexed. Costs and time were also good points. Another thing was to add value to content related subjects and to give more services to our customers. I think is was a good move, I am still monitoring the results to verify this.
Rand, this post speaks directly to me. I have around 170 localized real estate websites that are all indexed in Google. They have been getting links and traffic for around 5 years now and it's been a nightmare managing them. The reason I did this is because real estate is local and google really loved this strategy when I first got started with it. Now they have changed their mind on the subject and stuck me with a boat load of websites and my 1 domain competitors are kicking my butt in the SERPS.
Speaking from my experience with multiple websites over the years I would have to agree with you that 1 website is better than 170. Where were you when I needed you back then.. : *)
"...for most people the sheer amount of time needed to build a strong brand and earn trust makes it nearly impossible to allocate enough much-needed time to any other."
If you can afford to have a team large enough to manage multiple sites, you're good to go. 170 sites... WOW that would definitely be tough, if not down right impossible for a small company to manage. So you don't update some sites, and eventually they end up getting left in the dust by more niche focused competitors. Chances are you were really making some good money from your many websites in the past. So, it probably was a good strategy for that time. Now, it might be time to modify your strategy. This does not sound atypical to me. In fact, I believe that in order to be successful on the web, you've got to be able to manipulate your marketing strategy to survive. Things change, and you have to account for such.
Rand--If you can get two sites listed on the first page of Google, then it is better to have two sites instead of just one. 20 percent beats 10 percent. It gives you another chance to capture traffic. I've seen this done by a number of companies.
Well, if you get two sites listed of the same term, then hell yeah!!!
I recently was pleased that one of my sites and its independent subdirectories had pos 1,2 and 3 for the core brand terms, pushing 2 affiliates off page one...
I have never created a microsite for SEO but i have had good results in the viral/ branding arena.
Short memorable domains for a promo worked and the true measure of success is not SERP's but SALE's.
I understand the argument why so called "Micro Sites" can have a negative effect on your overall SEM plan. I do however think that in some cases it can have a positive effect! For instance if a company has a main site and a separate eCommerce site to target different audiences it can work very well.
Of course this depends on the industry, but if the main site is used to target "larger" custom work, and the eCommerce site is used to target small customers it can be a very efficient marketing tool. Not to mention it enables that company to have a stronger web presence while still providing relevant content.
I agree that from the search perspective, microsites are a no-no. But from a branding perspective, they can be a yes.
It's usually much easier to drive traffic from offline campaigns to microsites, as you can pick a domain name that relates to the content of the campaign. If the campaign is esoteric enough, the microsite will naturally rank #1 for the search term for the campaign name, as there is no competition in the SERPs - i.e. "Hot Juicy Burger" for the new Wendys viral.
I completely agree with you Rand, and like David I too have a set of sites I use for SEO testing, but that’s all I use them for. I have been doing SEO for a large e-comm site that wants to branch off and create many micro-sites, of which I have been against, and have been trying to explain to them that they will be fragmenting their audience and most likely will hurt sales because they will lose the opportunity to cross and up sell their other products. A major cola brand took this approach of fragmenting from a product standpoint back when they were testing a diet brand of cola and what happened was they fragmented their audience, didn’t gain market share, and instead just shifted their customers from their non-diet cola to the diet drink. This also created a less stable niche market that gave the competitors who couldn’t compete with the major brand the ability to create diet drinks and capture some of their market share within this less stable niche market. One solid website will beat many niche websites 95% of the time and create a solid brand with a good foundation that is harder to penetrate.
Bill
I use the microsite targeting strategy when I have a client who can afford work on a large site and is pursuing a very specific set of keywords.. This way the client benefits...
I do always advise them to increase their scope and focus and size of the site...
And they said size dun matters?!?!? Lol... Of course, it does... Long theory doesn't apply to everything I suppose.
Yep, I also agree with Rand's ideas. However, a lot of people are creating multiple sites in the same niche:
- use them as backup in case of being banned
- Dominate the rankings: I mean they get almost of the top positions.
I love the concept of one domain, and get trusted by Google by building strong backlinks to it. With good content, I am sure the website will be the best in the niche.
Cheers
PS: may be what I said is another topic.
"Dominate the rankings"
If someone can afford to put his efforts into dominating the rankings for a valuable keyword with several sites, he has probably already done everything he could in terms of bringing in traffic through SEs. That's why he now has the luxury of "attacking" others (pushing them out of the SERP) instead of building his own stuff.
If that's not the case (i.e. he had not already built the perfect site), then this crowding-out strategy is probably counter-productive in the long run. It wastes your time and energy, and builds "badwill" against you both in competitors and in visitors (who will find the same thing in many sites).
I agree with all of this and I particularly like #5. Its all about quality and I think that is a point that is often overlooked these days. Focus on one site at a time and I am sure you will be much happier with the end results.
In my experience, where I usually try to rank bigger parent sites exclusively, microsites have been a bit of a wasted effort; a lot of management and didn't help the ultimate focus enough to want to do it again. They didn't even really permeate Yahoo & MSN.
I do believe microsites have their place and value though, but it's their sweeping SERP flooding power that'll probably get them devalued eventually.
A critical reason to go for the niche site approach is one of the most obvious. The business continuity risk, which lots of people are taking into account. If you play fair and build quality content, you could still be severely affected in algorithm changes.
The way to mitigate the risk is one of the following:
Granted, there is a certain scale aspect to it. If you're Wikipedia, you'll have much greater protection by the mere size. But depending on the area, it may be difficult or impossible to ever get to that scale. That said, it's interesting to see another side being advocated over a long time. The niche graze was bordering on becoming annoying already. Cheers, Rand!
I only run the one site and mange a few client sites at the moment so i can't say I have experience with networking mini sites, but my general sense has me agreeing with you. it's what I've seen in search results.
I completely agree about the same content ranking better on the larger authority site tha the same content will rank on the smaller niche site.
I suspect mini sites still have value. Liek you mentioned a keyword search query domain would be a god example and I suspect that for longer tail phrases you can still do well with mini sites. But overall I would opt to be big and popular.
vangogh, you add another point of focus to one of Rand's comments I think is worth including in the discussion.
Almost universally, in my experience, a key phrase specific domain will rank quickly, but they are one-trick ponies. You'll have a hard time ranking for anything else.
As such, we occasionally use them but once they've obtained ranking will often 301 them over to the same content in a subdirectory of the main site.
As I mention below, I beieve in using microsites for targetting certain keywords, but I dont ususally 301 the sites, but keep them live - do you notice a drop in conversions (or increase) once the microsite is replaced with the subdirectory of the main site?
A point I also forgot to mention, is that if the site has a keyword domain, it usually helps in ranking for a large variation of long tail results, without major effort.
Actually we see an increase in conversion.
My presumption has been that visitors have greater trust in the more globally authoritative site.
We do see some diminishing of ranking, but the consolidation of message, and increased conversion, is typically worth it.
Great example rishil. Your site is also in top 10 on google.com apart from being #1 on .co.uk, which is awesome. So I think it really depends on the niche, competition, the time and resources you have and if you are thinking short term or long term.
Doing everything you can, on the main site, does make sense, but at the same time if you can devote some side resources to build a quick little microsite, built it, get a dozen or so links and then forget it forver. It can only do good. And if you think its not working anymore, just 301 it as Rand said to the mainsite or to the related subpage on the mainsite, and pass the juice.
BTW great info Rand, you really made me thinking on a few things Thanks.
Is there a reason you'd have a hard time ranking beyond the specific phrase in the domain? Is it the lack of pages? I wouldn't think it would be something specific to the domain since you could continue to build and grow the site and gain authority along the way.
It makes sense if the idea is you get limited because there's a limited number of pages.
Still I woould think that would be the use of a keyword domain minisite. If you want to focus on something very specific and could get the domain you'd at least be able to rank quicky for a chosen phrase and I assume continue to rank well for it.
I think different people use this strategy for different purposes - in my past years i used it to push keywords that diidnt get huge footfall, but converted well - you dont need oodles of content and backlinks if you are targetting one keyword and have a strong domain name - its like an unofficial SEO shortcut... e.g the query for antireflux surgery the site was done more than a couple of a years ago, and still brings in stady traffic to the doctor it was set up for - and this was even before I knew anything about "real" SEO...
Now I would probably give each section its own page and target the longer tail as well as the main term...
I no longer manage the account, but the doctor loves the site...one page, all the necessary information, and no spammy techniques - not that I am aware of anyway!
I've always been in favor of a single-site strategy, but my latest client is going to have to go another way. They sell one product which they name and package two different ways to market to two distinct markets. It's nothing dishonest -- they just believe that people looking for a health supplement and women looking for (I don't know if you've got language rules) a libido enhancer are separate groups and one shouldn't attempt to market to them in one shot.
They've already got the two sites, and I don't plan on shutting one of them down.
I'm interested in how to do that with multiple art type sites, especially when optimizing flash content. As a side note, I found an article on that, but I can't seem to find that right now.
Having previously taken Rand to task for sloppy reasoning it is fantastic to see him back at the top of his game. This commentary is from the Rand I (virtually) know and (platonically) love. Go Rand!
I agree with his every point (!) and those points do support his 'big is better' assertion. However, as has been mentioned by others, while big (currently - algos change) has certain benefits, small has others: risk spreading, higher conversion percentage, easier backlink quality, broader shallower in-site linking, easier direct ad sales, etc.
And then there is the question of just what is 'small'? "big"? If a niche could be one 50,000 page "big" site or ten 5,000 "small" page sites are those smaller sites really "small"?
The only real advantage of one big site is ease of branding. The choice of "one or many" is a matter for the business plan to decide. For those few that have one and use it.
To answer your final questions: I only develop multiple domains per niche. I am content.