Microsites vs landing pages
-
Hi all!
I'm trying to decide the best way forward with regards to a large site I'm currently in the process of redesigning/rebuilding.
Basically, the site already has a lot of well ranking seo landing pages targetted to different niches. With this in mind which is the best way forward in your experience?
1. Expand upon the existing niche landing pages adding more content etc and more niches?
or
2. Keep the landing pages but set up microsites for each of the niches. (On different domain names or sub domains?)
I do not want to polute the existing site as it performs very well and ranks very well for the keywords we target. Are there any benifits to micro sites seo wise?
Personally I think it best to expand on the landing pages and keep everything onsite but any adivce you can give me would be greatfully received!
Thanks in advance!
-
Hi, in the end I didn't go with microsites. As part of the site build we optimised the urls (using a CMS) and everything else on page we could and 301'd the old URL's to the new versions. Everything ranks as well as it did or better since lanch (4 weeks ago).
-
Hi James,
I'm following up on some older posts that are marked unanswered. Did you use microsites or landing pages? Can you share with us how things turned out? Do you have any more questions?
Thanks!
-
Sounds like overkill for what we are trying to achieve. I guess Microsites are geared more to separate product campaigns etc when you want a clear separation from your main site.
-
By the sounds of it the existing site is doing well and may have built up some domain authority which wouldn't be present with new micro sites. This may help the new landing pages rank higher than the microsites/
If the campaigns for the microsites go well and you achieve a number of inbound links although you can 301 redirect them to the existing site after the microsites have served their purpose their is no guarantee that 100% of 'link juice' will be passed on.
I think that your instinct to keep everything onsite is the correct one in this instance but that rather than adding more content to the existing landing pages you use the experience you have gianed and the lessons you have learned to develop new landing pages for these niches.
Hope this helps!
-
I think microsites work well for one-off competitions etc that aren't going to be around forever. I'd rather spend the time adding to a current site that's going to grow in size.
DD
-
The microsites are a nice idea and could work well in the long run, but you'd be fragmenting your efforts, so your main domain would probably suffer due to diminished updates and attention.
I'd stick with the single domain and as long as the niches are related continue to build on that.
I work on a set of sites that were split from a whole and they are a lot more work than if they were just one site together.
Tom
-
I am always cautions about adding microsites for SEO benefits as these can come back and bite you hard when you least expect it.
Personally, I tend to steer clear of doing this and would opt to keep adding content to your existing site. It doesn't all have to be on the same page, but link out to a few niche articles you could write.
Keep it straight forward and you will have no problems
Regards,
Andy
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
-
Help required to get the right landing page ranking
Hi, I've taken on a new ski client who wants to rank on page 1 on google.co.uk for [ski instructor courses]. When I first put that keyword into Moz rank tracker the landing page http://www.snowrehab.com/ski-instructor-courses/revelstoke-12-week-csia-level-1-&-2.html came up and it was ~ #30 Instead we wanted http://www.snowrehab.com/ski-instructor-courses to rank and I've optimised the copy (perhaps over optimised?) and have been redirecting & building links to that page. When I check in the SERPs (as unpersonalised as I can get) that new page appears to be ranking ~ 20 and the old page is nowhere to be seen. So far so good. However in the rank tracker Moz says the new page (exact URL) isn't ranking (not in top 50) and that when I put in 'entire subdomain' that the old page still comes up (and has improved to ~ 25). Any help / advice really appreciated! I want to prove to the client the rankings have improved / work I've been doing has helped!
On-Page Optimization | | richardpatey0 -
Why is this page not ranking?
Can you please tell me why this page is not ranking. http://goo.gl/BqoRT The page doesn't rank at all for keywords but even if I copy a line or 2 of text it still doesn't rank for that text. Any help will be much appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | JillB20130 -
WordPress and category/subcategory landing pages
Hey, Here's my situation. I'm building a WordPress blog for product reviews of a certain niche. Current category setup is 4 main categories with 4-8 subcategories each. Each subcategory has a unique description that will help it become a landing page for certain keywords, after which it lists the posts from that subcategory. The posts will always be assigned to a sub-category, never to a main category. My issue is what to do with the main categories. They're fairly general so they're not really targeting any keywords, and don't have any unique descriptions attached to them. I was thinking of choosing between three options on designing the main category pages: List the subcategories + normal posts loop that bring the latest posts from the subcategories (may create a lot of duplicate content since the subcategory pages are also listing their posts) List only the subcategories (+ maybe just the latest post from each subcategory) Don't link the main categories at all, instead only use them to create dropdowns for the subcategories So, what would you choose, and why?
On-Page Optimization | | mihaiaperghis0 -
Too Many on page links
What is everyone's opinion on this? < 100 at all times? 100 -200 Okay? 200-300+ A little much?
On-Page Optimization | | MirandaP0 -
Anchor text landing page
do you think google counts the H1 of the landing page from an anchor text, for example if the anchor text of my product is . blue sexy X, do you think its good if the h1 of the landing page says the exact same thing
On-Page Optimization | | Dirty0 -
What is important for page rank?
I have heard quality is the most important factor for page rank but after the 7 Nov 11 PR update I am no longer a believer. The PR on my home page dropped from 4 to 3 and the rest of my inside pages remained the same even though I have added a significant amount of content since the previous update and kept it fresh. Any thoughts on this most recent PR update?
On-Page Optimization | | casper4340 -
Pages not cached
Sorry for all the questions. I have dozens of article pages that are not cached by google. How can I get them cached?
On-Page Optimization | | azguy0 -
Page Authority
I have recently optimised a set of images for a client of ours: I'm looking through all the PA of these newly optimised images, and have varying PA {from SEOmoz toolbar} I understand that internal linking will pass link juice, and obviously external links will add to the overall PA. I have several pages with a PA of 36: { Fairly deep pages} Yet they have no external or internal links going to them. My question is "How can a page gain any authority when it has no visible links pointing at it?" Obviously there must be a link pointing at it {internally} as Google wouldn't have crawled the page right? Also lets say all the keywords are of equal competitiveness would the keywords with highest PA rank higher than those on O PA pages. Many Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Yozzer0