Microsites To Help Your Search Engine Ranking position (SERP)
• posted by Mark Farrell on Thursday, 15 October 2009 10:43
In this post I would like to offer my two penneth as to the use of microsites when trying to gain higher rankings.
My understanding of a microsite would be a one or more page website that is related to the theme of your main website, which is put together for the sole purpose of trying to obtain a relative link to your main website.
Sounds great doesn’t it and I’m sure it served as a good tool in the past. Below are the reasons why I believe this is no longer the case and why I don’t feel you should waste your time building them when you could be generating natural quality links.
Ok let’s say you put together three microsites all in a similar theme to your main website. The microsites themselves will have no PR value as they are new and nobody is linking to them.
The first thing you would then do would be to link each microsite to each other. Ok so now each microsite has at least two links from other related sites. Then you would place a link from each of the microsites to your main website and voila you now have three related links to your site.
Not the case. Let me break this down. First of all unless you are really clever you probably purchase all three new domain names with the same credit card and used the same domain registration details when registering. Google is registered as a domain registrar not to sell domains but so it can have access to all domain registration details. Why would it want this info?? Google has found you out already at this stage.
Next you have probably also purchased the three domain names from the same registrar so all will be in the same IP range. Again Google will see this and has found you out yet again.
Thirdly, you have linked each of the three sites up and have no other links into them. This shows again that the three sites are related so you have been found out a third time. There is no point in obtaining links from other sources for these sites as if you were going to spend your time doing this you might as well do it for your main site.
The point of this post is that there is really no point in embarking down the microsite route in a bid to increase rankings because Google is on the ball with such tactics and the three reasons above are only a few reasons that highlight this.
It all boils down to the fact that search is becoming more intelligent everyday and no matter how hard you try, for long term gains there is no substitute for good hard work.
My understanding of a microsite would be a one or more page website that is related to the theme of your main website, which is put together for the sole purpose of trying to obtain a relative link to your main website.
Sounds great doesn’t it and I’m sure it served as a good tool in the past. Below are the reasons why I believe this is no longer the case and why I don’t feel you should waste your time building them when you could be generating natural quality links.
Ok let’s say you put together three microsites all in a similar theme to your main website. The microsites themselves will have no PR value as they are new and nobody is linking to them.
The first thing you would then do would be to link each microsite to each other. Ok so now each microsite has at least two links from other related sites. Then you would place a link from each of the microsites to your main website and voila you now have three related links to your site.
Not the case. Let me break this down. First of all unless you are really clever you probably purchase all three new domain names with the same credit card and used the same domain registration details when registering. Google is registered as a domain registrar not to sell domains but so it can have access to all domain registration details. Why would it want this info?? Google has found you out already at this stage.
Next you have probably also purchased the three domain names from the same registrar so all will be in the same IP range. Again Google will see this and has found you out yet again.
Thirdly, you have linked each of the three sites up and have no other links into them. This shows again that the three sites are related so you have been found out a third time. There is no point in obtaining links from other sources for these sites as if you were going to spend your time doing this you might as well do it for your main site.
The point of this post is that there is really no point in embarking down the microsite route in a bid to increase rankings because Google is on the ball with such tactics and the three reasons above are only a few reasons that highlight this.
It all boils down to the fact that search is becoming more intelligent everyday and no matter how hard you try, for long term gains there is no substitute for good hard work.
