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
-
LinkedIn & B2B Marketing/Brand Authority: How Useful Is It?
Hi Folks, I'm in the process of drawing up some detailed step by step marketing and content strategy guidelines and I'm currently researching LinkedIn as a platform and the potential benefits for B2B marketing on it and building brand authority. I'm coming across some conflicting data regarding how useful it is. Does anyone have any experience or opinions on the viability of LinkedIn for B2B marketing and building brand authority? A couple of questions would be: Is it a viable B2B marketing platform? Is it a good place to build brand and industry authority? What techniques would you concentrate on over others? Any advice on the subject would be great. Thanks, folks. Regards Gareth
Branding | | PurpleGriffon0 -
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 -
What is your thoughts on the proper way for one brand to promote a sub-brand.
Greetings fellow Mozers! How Do Major Companies Promote Their New Sub-Brands I'm curious to see everyone's thoughts on how and what is the best process to promoting your companies new brand. I see companies like Wayfair.com promoting their sub-brand "All Modern" and "Wayfair supply" (maybe "sub-brand" isn't the best term) in the top left of the page as a link. I believe this is only a SEO play because they are only outbound links to the brand website. If you go to "All Modern" there are no links back to Wayfair. I then looked at a company like Gap.com and notice that all of their other brands are promoted on the website and are also interchangeably linked to one another. Does anyone have any thoughts on the best way to link and or promote your smaller brand that could potentially turn it into a Major Brand. Do you think this is just a SEO linking play. I'm curious to see everyone's thoughts
Branding | | rpaiva0 -
Rebranding/Url Structure Change
Hi Everyone, First off thanks for taking the time to looking at my question. I was wondering about rebranding and URL structure changes. Right now my company is planning on changing their domain and doing a massive change to their site which includes a url structure change. The idea is in September they will be changing the site to be a combination of wordpress and ruby on rails (currently the site is ruby on rails). The homepage and design on the site will be completely different and parts of the site will be in php and other parts will be in ruby. The URL structure will also be changing completely at the same time. Each page will be completely different in structure, including the homepage (currently now it redirects you to a subfolder page that is your local page [i.e. nyc if you are in new york]). Then, the following month, they will be changing their domain name to a different domain. I have asked them to do this in stages. First the domain, second the rebrand, and third the URL restructuring or we could lose SEO traffic but they asked a freelancer his opinion and the freelancer said that you could do the rebrand change with the URL restructure and then domain later and while you're SEO may disappear, it'll definitely return in 3 to 4 months. Could you tell me who is right and what the correct method is to make this change?
Branding | | MattJD0 -
Can we use SEOMOZ to get insights/data on the members of a twitter list?
It would be so useful if we could get insights into the members of a twitter list in the same way we can get statistics on the people we search through the "search twitter bio" options (following/followers/RTs/Social Authority/etc). This is possible through the twitter api but it limits to 20 list member which is useless. Anyone know of a solution? Thanks!
Branding | | VGRRI0 -
Video Hosting Question - host on website via wistia type solution or upload to youtube and embed?
I have a client that owns a Video production company. They have a lot of video examples of all their different types of services i.e. commercial production, TV broadcast production, business videos, training videos, etc. Where should I host their portfolio of videos, should I: A: Use a paid video hosting solution like wistia B. Upload to youtube or vimeo and embed to my own site The only videos titles with keywords that I could see bringing any type of conversions for their business would be their demo reels, for example: "Atlanta Corporate Video Production Demo Reel." The other videos would be the name of the video "Court TV: Cop On Trial For Killing Wife" and therefore wouldn't bring the kind of visitors that are searching for a video production service. This is why I'm curious about what the best hosting option is. Any advice would be a great help.
Branding | | RonMedlin0 -
One Page desapeared from Google results over the weekend.
Has anyone had this happen? My page (just one page) is gone from the search results. Not only did we lose our position in Google (we were #9) now the entire page is completely gone from Google index. However, It is on the first page of Bing and Yahoo. We did have our server down from Friday to Monday. I went into Google webmaster tools on Monday and saw a big X next to sitemap. It said HTTP Error 404 detected on August 21, 2011. So Google went in on Sunday and came up with the error. But why only one page is missing and all the other pages still show up? I was thinking that page was blacklisted by Google but when I went to Webmaster Tools to listen to "Requesting reconsideration of your site" video all they talk about is the "site" being blacklisted not a particular page. Any one has any ideas?
Branding | | DmitryP0 -
What are the best ways to improve/trigger "Brand Signals"?
Google considers some companies "brands" or stronger "brands" than other sites. What are the best ways to show Google you are an actual brand, not a fly by night eCom?
Branding | | zachc_coffeeforless.com0