How to Host Microsites: Mission Critical or Six of One / Half Dozen of the Other?

[Alaniz]

Hello, fellow Mozzers!  Been racking my brain. Thanks for your help on this one!

I am in the process of putting together several microsites for our marketing agency.  The sites feature similar theme and design elements, but are focused on delivering a customized industry-specific visitor experience with unique navigation, brand messaging, services, case studies, etc.

I am struggling with whether I should host as entirely separate websites, as subdomains of the parent site, or as separate WP installs in subfolders of the main domain.

I have been leaning toward the sub-folder option to share domain authority and keep our SEO efforts consolidated.  But I am also concerned that the microsite "home pages" will underperform as sub-folder pages, versus being an actual home page of a unique domain or sub-domain.

Is this a six-of-one or half-dozen of the other situation, or are there some important considerations I'm missing here?

Thank you for your help here!

[eugenecomputergeeks]

Not sure I'm following you, but I don't think it's ever a good idea to have different micro sites hosted all on the same host with the same IP.  Why not build up the domain authority for ONE domain.  I remember herding Google not liking the new subdomain craze too, but that was just on a podcast.   Sorry I don't understand your question better.

[Alaniz]

Hi, Eugene.  Thanks for the response.  I'll try to explain it better.

I would like to create a website experience that is specific to several sub-specialties of our marketing agency (tech, medical, legal, etc). Each "microsite" has unique brand messaging, navigation, styling, case studies, blog.

I am trying to figure out the best practice for hosting and site architecture. For instance, here are my considerations:

Main Parent Site: www.abcmarketing.com

Separate Sites Option:  www.abcmedicalmarketing.com
Sub-domain Option: medical.abcmarketing.com
Sub-Folder Option: abcmarketing.com/medical

The Sub-folder option seems to be the best way to consolidate efforts and maintain authority for one domain, as you said.  But I'm not sure if there are any other considerations that I'm missing here.  For instance, will the sub-folder hosted microsites rank as well as if they were hosted and maintained separately?  Is there anything that Google will potentially not like about this? Or is this simply and clearly the best way to proceed?

Thanks for your help!

[Dave_Whitty]

Hey Alaniz,

I would run the subfolder route for two reasons.

1. Branding. You can leverage all of you brand equity under one domain but still let people know that you specialize in marketing for the listed industries. Your case studies and blog will show you know your stuff. People will probably think each site is a separate business. You will want your customers to know you service other industries so they can (hopefully) refer others. So maybe you do a killer job marketing for the legal side and the client has a buddy in medical and they can easily refer the friend to the one website.

2. SEO time and effort. Starting from scratch on six sites in competitive markets will take some serious time and resources to get them to generate traffic. Focusing on one domain will pass the link equity on to the other pages. I would rather manage one site versus six.

I love seeing strategy questions on here, those are always the tough ones.

[justin-brock]

If the main website is in WordPress, I recommend creating a new page template in your existing WP installation, and using that to create your landing pages and microsites.

Adding another subdomain or a separate WordPress install is only going to give you headaches. Analytics, updates, plugins, etc., all get more complicated when you do that. It may seem like a quick fix, but you'd only be making trouble for yourself later.

Better to spend the time up front creating new page templates on your existing WP domain.

Here's an article on creating new page templates: http://codex.wordpress.org/Page_Templates

Here are a couple of articles on creating new sidebars:

• http://www.blogohblog.com/adding-extra-sidebar-to-your-wordpress-theme/
• https://wordpress.org/plugins/custom-sidebars/

[Alaniz]

Thanks, Justin.  Good advice.  The important thing to me was the ability to deliver unique brand and user experience, including navigation menu, content, colors, logo.  I've been putting things together on my own thus far without the technical programming know how, but now that you bring this up, I am sure that my developer will be able to help me build this out under a single theme and install, no problem. Appreciate the thought!  Andrew

[Alaniz]

Thanks, Dave. Great points. Thanks for the feedback!

[Dave_Whitty]

Happy to help, good luck!