How Microsites Can Do More Harm Than Good for SEO

Search engine professionals debate a wide range of topics. It often seems that there are arguments for either side of any SEO strategy. A common SEO strategy often debated is the use of microsites to improve ranking.

Microsites give organizations the ability to segment information and focus a site on one concise topic. Organizations that host conferences or events often use this strategy – creating microsites for each show, which allows them to easily provide attendees with information pertaining to one specific event. However, there are also multiple reasons why you wouldn’t want to break your website into multiple sites.

The following are potential SEO issues your business can encounter from using microsites.

Inbound Link Loss

A website with microsites can dilute the inbound link value it could be earning otherwise. Inbound links are one of the factors Google uses to rank websites. The quantity and quality of links that point to a website are important. Similarly, overall quantity and quality of links to the domain is also important. If you separate your sites, they begin to work as separate sites, competing against one another for rank in search results. With one single site, there are more inbound links pointed to the domain, instead of splitting your link juice across multiple domains.

Loss of Authority

We can all agree, content contributes to site authority and rank on SERPs. A microsite may make sense if you want your brand to become an authority on several very different topics. However, if your topics are closely related, it’s to your benefit to keep the content on one domain. For example, if your site features content for both payday loans and installment loans, you can become the authority on short-term loans in general. You don’t need to have two separate sites to become an authority, and rank organically.

Duplicate Content

Splitting your website into multiple websites means creating a lot more unique content. Copying content from your other sites – whether it be webpage content or blog posts – can lead to content duplication which can cause loss of rank. By maintaining one website, you can focus on creating unique content for one web property that has a higher likelihood of improving rank. If your business requires multiple sites, use canonical tags when sharing content between properties to ensure the main site gets full SEO credit.

Loss of Analytics

Tracking traffic for multiple sites can get tricky, and expensive if you don’t have the knowledge or ability to place your own code. To keep accurate track of traffic and performance of multiple sites, you’ll need to create multiple GA accounts or tracking tags, and make sure they’re placed properly.

Maintenance Fees

Maintaining multiple sites is expensive. In addition to the hosting fees, you’ll need to pay vendors for design, SEO, content and social media for completely separate web properties. That can get expensive for a small business owner. Maintaining one website is easier, and much more affordable.

Save your business time and money by maintaining one website. If you need to maintain separate web properties, be sure to avoid content duplication and always prioritize your main domain.

 

 

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