Microsites Can Have an Adverse Impact on SEO

Why microsites are bad for SEOMicrosites can have a negative impact on the search engine optimization strategy adopted by a firm to improve its website’s rankings across the search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing, their benefits notwithstanding. SEO professionals and online marketing specialists continue to debate on whether to use microsite for promoting a business on the net. For a start, a microsite which is actually a subset of the main website, comprising a separate webpage or a bunch of pages, and functioning separately, enables a firm to highlight one particular aspect of the business.

For instance, if you own and operate a string of automobile servicing centers, you might want to dedicate a distinct website for each and every branch. Having multiple sites or microsites could be beneficial when you need to publicize several products or services or a chain of shops. But you might want to give a second thought on running multiple versions of your website, given the likely issues that could arise from their use.

Site authority

It could be difficult for you to understand or determine how Google or Yahoo evaluates a site that is dedicated to a specific topic or subject-matter. However, it is common knowledge that the popular search engines analyses and ranks sites that consistently focus on a definite theme or themes that are interrelated. For instance, if you regularly upload blogs on health on your site, but occasionally posts articles on travel, then in all likelihood, Google would conclude that your site is devoted to health.

It is obvious that texts related to health would be vastly different from content pertaining to travel. So, it’d be better on your part to have a separate site or blog for the two subjects to maintain the individuality or originality of the subject matters. But, on the other hand, if you write routinely on themes that are interconnected or correlated, say different dog breeds and dog parks then you don’t need to compartmentalize the site into microsites.

There’s no hard and fast rule that a site needs to always focus only on one particular theme-you can keep posting content on a variety of topics but ensure that the subjects are closely related. Take into account the far-reaching implications of developing content on a diverse range of areas as well as your long-term objectives of maintain a website, before making up your mind on sectioning the same into numerous small sites.

Upkeep

You may have to face maintenance issues when you monitor microsites or multiple websites. What or whatever you do for keeping a single site search engine optimized and user-friendly has to be done several times over when you’ve more than one website. For instance, you’ll have to maintain an independent XML sitemap for each site for keeping them smartphone-friendly and make them load faster on the web browser.

You’ll also need to keep in mind several other maintenance aspects as well.

Tracking traffic

Tracking traffic across multiple sites or domains is apparently easy, technically speaking. But in reality, making the requisite settings in Google Analytics could be a complex procedure for the webmaster or web designer and developer. That is one more good reason why it’d be safer for you to stick to a single site, even if the same is devoted to multiple subject matters.

The risk of content duplication

Let’s suppose one of your automobile service center branches uploads a blog on a high-quality engine oil brand. The blog attracts a high volume of traffic inducing you to share the article on sites of other branches, thereby increasing the risk of content getting duplicated and the site’s ranking taking a beating. When it comes to sharing a popular blog or post across microsites, make sure you use the canonical tag.

Inbound links

If you’ve microsites, then there’s a high possibility of the value of inbound links getting diluted owing to these becoming split and shared across the domains.

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