We’ve recently been discussing a lot about the marketing purposes that microsites can have, and which is the best strategy to up our games using them. Everything from SEO reasons, target audiences reasons, helping out your clients reasons, creating unbiased sites, and even creating deeply biased sites has been covered, so we thought it was time to dig in a little deeper into the not-just-marketing uses you can give your microsites, and how much they can help your company.
So today’s topic is, of course, not for everyone, and pretty much only for those companies that actually have a location and geographical divisions. If you run a rather small company with a local approach, this will all probably be just a moo-point (hope you caught that!), and you won’t find much utility in this article. However, if you do run a company with regional departments, then this was made just for you! So let’s jump into the complete list of aspects to consider about creating (or not) a microsite strategy for your geographical divisions, shall we?
SEO benefits
Of course, we need to start on the very first benefit we always highlight about creating a microsite, and it is the great things a microsite can do for your SEO. Basically, a microsite comes down to being a whole new white linen that you can use to fill up with keywords, link to your sites, links to external sites, brand new content and constant updates, and everything we know Google is a sucker for. So, no matter what your microsite really is about, it can always be turned into an SEO gold machine, and you should never pass up an opportunity to create SEO gold.
It will be a great help for your users
Creating microsites whose main purpose is to get specific about the territorial differences of your company can be really helpful and add a lot of value to your users’ experience. Is one of your products sold out somewhere? Let them know! Are any of your locations having an awesome sale? Use their microsite to promote it! In a website that’s really all about one of your branches, you can get as specific as you like about it, and help your users find out everything they need to know about their closest location. Basically, by doing this division, not only they’ll actually know all the different places that your company works in, but they’ll also be able to learn the specifics about each one of them.
It looks sophisticated!
How cool does it look to go into a website that actually has all these small websites about their different branches? Really cool. This will not only position your brand as the super cool cross-country (or international!) that it is but also as one that cares so much about them all, that you decided to create a personalized site for each. By having these regional-divided microsites, your users will feel like they are dealing with a classy brand that cares about and knows their industry and is willing to push the limits in order to personalize their clients’ experience as much as possible. Wouldn’t you want to be that brand?
They are a great help to target your audience
This benefit has two different meanings, and we’ll go ahead and explain both. If your big website has all these small websites that you can browse through when you get to the main one, this means that the group of users that actually decide to go ahead and dive into the more specific websites is integrated by people who are already interested in it. This means that your retargeting Ads will prove to be a lot more efficient because they’ll be shown to audiences that actually care about the product or service that you are intending to advertise.
The second benefit comes along with the fact that, if we assume that people will decide to browse through the microsite that is actually corresponding to where they’d go to get your product (not that they can’t be curious and go through all of them!), you can use that information to target your audience by geographical conditions. Meaning you can show a branch about certain Ad to the people from this place that browsed through your site. Or even the ones who have just browsed through your big site. Or the ones who haven’t browsed at all! The possibilities are endless.
Launching Ads of the specific websites
Related to the previous item, besides the Ad campaigns we run for our main website, we can totally launch Ads for our specific microsites, and you know who really appreciates that? Yep, Google Ads. And you know how they reward it? Yep, by prioritizing your position in Google Search listings. So, not only can you improve your SEO with the techniques that we all are trying to figure out, but also with the Ads that link to your microsite, that links to your main website.
So, to conclude, of course, it’s important to consider if you have the time, and budget to create a bunch of microsites that maybe you don’t really need. But, if you do have it and this article got you excited, then I believe there is a lot to explore and benefit from the regional-division microsites strategy, so why don’t you go ahead, give it a try, and get a sip of all the benefits named above?
Mora is a PPC Analyst at Hellbent Digital at work, and a theater nerd when not at work. And it turns out understanding theater—that is, how to put on compelling live shows that engage the audience—is a very useful skill for understanding digital marketing.