North East

Microsites marketing and SEO

What is a microsite? well it is a small website (sometimes called a minisite or weblet) focusing on one part of a businesses services of products. It could be a big eCommerce site has a new brand it wants to feature and draw more attention too, or a special event or promotion that is the focus of the microsite. They may also target a specific customer groups, presenting information to the chosen target audience group in a very exact way.

In the most basic it is a small website, they can be temporary or permanent they are usually independent from the main site and have their own URL but linked to a larger website or brand. It is targeted to achieve a specific purpose, brand awareness, information gathering or just highlighting one (or a few) of a brands products.

Microsites offer you the chance to try something new

Microsites give you the opportunity to be more fun or creative than the main site, they can incorporate Facebook, email marketing and advertising campaigns and offer customers another way to engage with your brand or product.

They can also offer you the chance to test out interest or effectiveness of certain ways of presenting the product or service, so you know what is most likely to work on your main website. They also can just be dropped if they are found not to be effective, without any detriment to your main website or brand.

Like any website they need to be designed well, they are small but they need to carry the information the viewer is looking for, they need to be visually engaging and carry over the branding and links to the rest of the brand and main site.

The benefits of a microsite

One of the main benefits of a microsite is that it can deliver they information very targeted to a specific target audience. Visitors will stay on your site longer if they find the information they are looking for, they don’t want to wade though categories and sub categories for it, they just want to see the information they are interested in. Microsites make this possible.

In addition to this they offer SEO benefits, creating content on a specific topic or product should rank highly in searches, which could drive traffic to your products and services both on the microsite and on your main site too. Each link to your website is beneficial to your search engine optimisation and therefore your search ranking.

Another plus is that a small site can be set up rapidly to capture a new trend and direct searches to you.

Recently I have set up a few microsites for a tiling company in Harrogate, creating small websites, visually similar to the main site but focusing on specific product lines, these microsites give the products an enhanced presentation and boost for the search algorithms and more of a chance to show up when searched for.

And finally the more hooks (websites) out there give you the added presence and opportunity to grab the customers attention.

Setting up a microsite can be great value for money

We can offer microsites complete with hosting and email accounts, linked and designed to enhance your main site for really affordable prices, our price for a 5 page microsite is just £195, less than a one off advert in a magazine! So if you are interested in getting a microsite, just let me know.

When a local search doesn’t always return truly local

Recently I did a brief check on my Google search rank for local services, I wanted to see how my new re-design had affected my search rank if at all.

I typed in “web design Stokesley” and clicked search, the results were quite interesting, firstly I was happy to see that my website was still listed. I noticed a few of the names of my local competitors, some directory sites and I also noticed some names of businesses I was not familiar with.

“Oh” I though, “some more businesses have set up locally”, the Google search results page displayed their (meta) descriptions and stated “Design and website development to businesses in Stokesley” and “Web Design Stokesley. Stunning, affordable, custom built website design for businesses in Stokesley” .

They certainly sounded local, I clicked onto them and read about what they offered and was amazed to see one from the South East coast, another was from the West Midlands and the third from Devon, certainly not local to Stokesley.

Of the organic search results (not the highlighted pay per click sponsored search results, but the normal ones) 3 of the 10 listed websites were genuine local businesses offering web design, 4 of the 10 were directories and the remaining 3 were businesses pretending to be local.

Once I found these sham local businesses, I started to look for more and found so many that I cannot believe I haven’t seen them until now. Several I have encountered of these websites do not show any actual address, only and email address and a free-phone number or mobile which again has no way to learn of its locality.

Of course they can offer their services to individuals and businesses in whatever area they choose, as can I. It’s true that web design, is one of those businesses really that can be done from anywhere and I for one have clients right across the world who I provide designs for.

However, when someone types in looking for a service locally, they tend to want someone who is genuinely local, they may want to be able to meet and discuss their project. They may hate email and trying to explain themselves entirely at distance and actually want face to face style communication, or want to know the person they are dealing with, after all we all get more of an idea of people who we can work with if we get a chance to meet them first .

The fact that I think this sham local listing is wrong though doesn’t mean that anyone else will, and I am sure they will continue, especially if it fools people into taking them on to a project in the belief that they are local. So please check that the business you think is local, actually is.

If it has no listed address, or land-line number, maybe wonder why, I generally won’t buy from a website that has no bricks and mortar address as I view it as suspect. Anyone from anywhere in the world can buy a .co.uk domain name and set up a fake business which looks like the real thing, this may work fine, but if it doesn’t it may not be easy to get your money back and you certainly won’t have the local service you had been hoping for.