SEO Tips For Internet Marketers

September 21, 2011By Jill Whalen

Jill,

I was wondering if you had any advice about which option is better SEO wise?buying a domain for a microsite or adding the information to your website as additional content? Through keyword research I saw that any keywords about [this subset of our business] was producing a lot of monthly searches, some (450,000 searches monthly). So I came up with this microsite that talked about this and then suggested our products on it as well.

We launched it last week and I noticed that the search engines haven't even cached it yet. So I'm curious if we would have showed up faster if we had bought a unique domain? I would be grateful if you could provide any feedback you experienced if you were ever in this situation.

Thank you!

Kim

++Jill's Response++

Hi Kim,

Personally, I've never been a fan of microsites, and I usually recommend keeping the content on your main domain. It usually has some authority built up that a new microsite domain wouldn't have.

But more important than where it is housed is how you link to it from the rest of your site. I looked on your main site and couldn't see any obvious links to the new content. You have to integrate it into your site in order for it to be noticed, read, and indexed by Google -- regardless of what domain it lives on.

Remember, if you don't want to promote it (by linking to it from the rest of your site), you can assume that Google won't either! This means that the content should be good enough that you want to promote it from other appropriate areas of your main site. And just one link from one page is likely not going to cut it either. If this content is to truly be a worthwhile part of your site, then your best bet is to link to it from your main navigation so that it's easy for people and search engines to find.

Hope this helps!

Best,

Jill

Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, an SEO Services company in the Boston, MA area since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen

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Labels: Domain, Microsite