Microsites vs landing pages

[EclipseLegal]

Hi all!

I'm trying to decide the best way forward with regards to a large site I'm currently in the process of redesigning/rebuilding.

Basically, the site already has a lot of well ranking seo landing pages targetted to different niches. With this in mind which is the best way forward in your experience?

1. Expand upon the existing niche landing pages adding more content etc and more niches?

or

2. Keep the landing pages but set up microsites for each of the niches. (On different domain names or sub domains?)

I do not want to polute the existing site as it performs very well and ranks very well for the keywords we target. Are there any benifits to micro sites seo wise?

Personally I think it best to expand on the landing pages and keep everything onsite but any adivce you can give me would be greatfully received!

Thanks in advance!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I am always cautions about adding microsites for SEO benefits as these can come back and bite you hard when you least expect it.

Personally, I tend to steer clear of doing this and would opt to keep adding content to your existing site. It doesn't all have to be on the same page, but link out to a few niche articles you could write.

Keep it straight forward and you will have no problems

Regards,

Andy

[Tompt]

The microsites are a nice idea and could work well in the long run, but you'd be fragmenting your efforts, so your main domain would probably suffer due to diminished updates and attention.

I'd stick with the single domain and as long as the niches are related continue to build on that.

I work on a set of sites that were split from a whole and they are a lot more work than if they were just one site together.

Tom

[krissy-cca]

I think microsites work well for one-off competitions etc that aren't going to be around forever. I'd rather spend the time adding to a current site that's going to grow in size.

DD

[CPU]

By the sounds of it the existing site is doing well and may have built up some domain authority which wouldn't be present with new micro sites. This may help the new landing pages rank higher than the microsites/

If the campaigns for the microsites go well and you achieve a number of inbound links although you can 301 redirect them to the existing site after the microsites have served their purpose their is no guarantee that 100% of 'link juice' will be passed on.

I think that your instinct to keep everything onsite is the correct one in this instance but that rather than adding more content to the existing landing pages you use the experience you have gianed and the lessons you have learned to develop new landing pages for these niches.

Hope this helps!

[EclipseLegal]

Sounds like overkill for what we are trying to achieve. I guess Microsites are geared more to separate product campaigns etc when you want a clear separation from your main site.

[KeriMorgret]

Hi James,

I'm following up on some older posts that are marked unanswered. Did you use microsites or landing pages? Can you share with us how things turned out? Do you have any more questions?

Thanks!

[EclipseLegal]

Hi, in the end I didn't go with microsites. As part of the site build we optimised the urls (using a CMS) and everything else on page we could and 301'd the old URL's to the new versions. Everything ranks as well as it did or better since lanch (4 weeks ago).