Most websites grow over time to many hundred or even thousands of pages. There is also something called a microsite that only consists of 1-10 keyword rich pages. Microsites are not the same as micro niche sites but many people confuse the two. A microsite is mostly niche driven but it’s goal is usually to make an affiliate sale of some sort. Some people make these sites and put all of their work into seo instead of articles. Larger sites might also create these microsites to advertise a product. In this article we will try to help you decide if a microsite is worth creating and some tips on how to do it.

Microsite, Own Domain or Sub-domain

When setting up your site you first decision is if you should use a new domain name or to use a sub-domain. This depends on your situation. If you are creating a microsite on a new niche it would be best to have its own domain name. If you are creating a site which is in the same niche as another website you own or you have a non-niche top level domain you can get away with a sub-domain. Even though google and other search engines look at sub-domains as a new website from your top level domain you do not want something like archostablets.seosites.com, that just doesn’t look right and my guess is that Google would not like it either. On the other hand punchcigars.stogieblog.com would be acceptable and google would like it. What ever you choose you want to make sure to pick an exact searched domain name to help with your seo.

How To Create A Microsite

There are many free microsite templates wrote in HTML. You can find these by doing a quick google search. The other option for creating your mini sites is to use WordPress. WordPress makes it easy to create these sites quickly and they are easy to set up SEO. Either way you go you will want to research and make sure you do on page seo and write some well written keyword rich articles/information on all pages you add. Here is a list of wordpress must have seo plugins. My suggestion is to use wordpress since it cuts down on your coding and seo work.

Microsite SEO

Since microsites are only a couple of pages seo is the key to its success. Domain, on-page and off-page is a must. As explained above you should start with a good seo domain. You can use the google keyword tool to research domain names. See my post exact searched domain name on tips on how to use the tool. Exact match domain will give you a good start at climbing the ranks to making a successful microsite. Next you need to create keyword rich articles, place your META tags and all that fun stuff. WordPress has plugins that do this for you. After finishing your site and all your on-page seo you can then move on to off-page seo. Make sure to start out slowly by submitting your site to the top search engines and directories. Join forums and start chatting, comment on blog posts in your niche. Do not, I will repeat, DO NOT SPAM, post on blogs that is not in the same niche, push hard in forums as a newbie or use ANY type auto submission tools to get your link out there until your site is well established. One of the biggest mistakes people make is creating a new site then gaining 50,000 backlinks in the first week. You could have your new site marked as spam by Google.

Microsite Maintenance

Once your page is live and you have good on-site and off-site seo you can relax a little. A microsite doesn’t require a lot of work once you have it to the point you are happy with. Google does like updates though, fresh content is good for seo so it is a good idea to check on it and add to your pages every once in a while to keep things fresh. You will also want to keep an eye on your affiliate linked from your microsite. Affilliates come and go while using places like shareasale.com but if you keep an eye on them you can make some good money.

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