Do Microsites Help My SEO?

Microsites allow Singapore digital marketing companies and agencies to segment information and laser focus a particular site on one topic. For example, most of the organizations that hold digital marketing conferences several times per year have a specific site where they post details of upcoming conferences.

This kind of sites could have significant ramifications on SEO. Let us look at some of the potential SEO issues that could come up as a result of having microsites that are associated to your main website.

Inbound Links

Inbound links are some of the important ranking factors in the current SEO world. Imagine you have an organic food joint in Tampines, Clementi, and Sentosa. Each joint offers the same products. Should you go ahead and create a site for each of the locations?

In such a situation, we advise clients not to invest their time and money on separate websites as it can dilute the inbound link value. This is because the quality and quantity of links to a domain are equally important as the quality and quantity of links that point to an individual page on your website.

It is also important to note that separate sites are viewed as independent of each other by search engines, and so they will end up competing for the same top positions on SERPs. You stand a better chance of getting high ROI if you have one professionally designed and optimized site with quality links pointing to it as opposed to having the same links pointing to multiple domains.

Duplicate Content

One of the challenges of having multiple sites is that you may end up duplicating content. Let us say you write an article about the health benefits of eating organic foods and you decide to post it on all the three microsites. That is fine, but if the webmasters may end up creating duplicating content if, their efforts are not well coordinated.

You can avoid this kind of issue by making sure that you include a canonical tag when sharing similar content between the sites.

Tracking Analytics Data

Technically, it is possible to keep track of the amount of traffic received on multiple domains. However, the process of setting up Google Analytics for each site is complicated, and you may end up making decisions based on the wrong data.

Site Authority

It is not easy to know what metrics that Google uses to determine that a particular site is an authority on a particular topic. What we know is that content is one of the primary factors that this search engine uses to make a determination.

For example, if you have a WordPress blog that focuses on pets, then one day you decide to write a random post about the various travel destinations in Singapore, it is safe to assume that Google will perceive your blog as an authoritative source of information about pets before it considers it an authority on Singapore travel destinations.

The Singapore content is entirely different from the pet content on the blog, and there is little or no connection between the two. The target audience may also be different. Based on these facts, if you intend to start writing about travel destinations, it is recommended to have a separate blog for that particular type of content. Over time, each will be recognized as an authority on its specific topic or niche.

On the other hand, if you write on topics that are related, let us say, post articles about cat nutrition and horse nutrition on the same blog. Google will consider the site as a reliable source of information about pet nutrition. In this kind of scenario, it would not make sense to have a different site for each pet. It is also important to note that a site can be considered an authority on multiple topics.

Final Thought

Before splitting your main site into multiple sites, take into consideration the SEO impacts such move will have on your brand. More importantly, stay focused on the long terms goals.