Should I try to optimize for SEO a site that lives only for 5 days

[Adviso]

Hi, we are actually building a new microsite that will live on promo.domain.com.  The site will have a promo for about 5 days and will be changed for a new promo after 5 days.

Considering that the site www.domain.com has a high autority (67) and is well indexed in search engine, should I try to optimise this site for keywords such as

• promo "keyword"

• rebate "keyword"

• cheap "keyword"

even if the site will be optimized for those keywords only for 5 days.

We are already doing PPC campaign on these keywords but I am wondering if Google will have the time to rank us in the top 10 results in those 5 days or if I am loosing my time.

My other option is to leave the TITLE of this site always the same like Groupon is doing and focus on very generic keywords.  Which option do you think is the best?

[FrankWickers]

If the site is only going to be in effect for 5 days I wouldn't put much effot into heavy optimization. I would only do basic on page stuff that requires all of 5 minutes of your time - title tags and such.

Reason being there is a high chance the Google bots won't even come by and index the site within the 5 day period.

[DanDeceuster]

I don't really get what you are saying here. The content of your promo subdomain is going to change every 5 days? If this is the case, you want to do SEO for promos generically. If you have a hat promo for the next 5 days, you will never rank for hat promos in 5 days. That and if you did rank for it in say a month, then it won't even be hat promos anymore anyway, so your ranking would go away.

Do SEO, just do it for whatever your website is about, not for what the content will be for the next 5 days.

[StalkerB]

So the subdomain stays the same but the content of the promo changes every 5 days?

If the main site is popular enough and you have a decent link structure into it then the site will probably be crawled and ranked in time, but barely and probably more effort than it's worth.

Optimising for the generic terms would probably be the better option (as you're not losing anything in the short term but will eventually get a long term gain. In theory).

[NextDigital51]

I would suggest instead of having the microsite on promo.domain.com, it should be on domain.com/promo. This gives you a bigger chance of Google indexing the microsite as Google do not pass value to subdomains as much, having it on a subfolder will bring you a bigger chance.

I would only do basic onsite such as page titles, metas, alt tags and internal linking, I wouldn't brother building links as it would take too long to be found.

If you are in the right industry, I suggest also using social media to promote your promotion as this will help your organic rankings.

[gfiorelli1]

Mmm... to SEO that subdomain exactly for the 5 days promotion: no I would not do it.

To SEO the subdomain for a keyword like Brand Name Promotion (+ another couple of keywords), yes. It is not very difficult to do and you can gain more brand visibility.

[JonathanVilliard]

That's what I woould do too. Add a Title such as "Brand Name Promotion + 1-2 keywords", and NOT change it even if the promo changes.

[elephantseo]

I would recommend doing SEO to the site particuliarly if you are going to promote via TV ads or anything other than PPC that could result in search queries. The reason being is you could capitalize on QDF, real-time results and auto suggest queries.

To keep it extremely efficient make the page a template where you can just change the "keyword" in a file & save so it updates on the site. A slightly more lowtech way would be a global find & replace on the html file for the "keyword". Basically, you do the onsite SEO once and then spend 5 seconds updating to the new keyword every 5 days.

You will want to post a short blog post each time there is a new promo to help get the search index updated quickly; just make sure to ping the appropriate services with your blog.

For offsite I'd recommend the general social media sites (facebook, twitter) and any extremely relevant niche social media/forum/community sites. If these are promotions that would appeal to mom bloggers & deal finding sites then do an outreach campaign telling the site owners you are going to have a new promo every five days and offer to give them a "heads up" before the general public. You can then build an e-mail list & blast out the promo to them. At the same time you can offer to have them follow your promo twitter account.