Microsites are small web sites of less than a dozen pages that inform customers about a particular product, service or event. Today, thousands of companies — from those in the Fortune 500 to local mom-and-pop shops — continue to use these mini-websites as core, essential tools in successful marketing campaigns and to put focus on a specific product or service. You probably visit these sites all the time and don’t even realize it.

Let’s take a look at a good potential for microsites – Phred Manufacturing. Phred is the in the situation of having several fabricated metal products it manufactures. As a fabrication house, Phred has a number of manufacturing services it also offers – many of which can be major areas of additional business – such as laser cutting, waterjet cutting, routing and flame cutting. The problem is that these services are not easy to integrate into the home website and get the benefits of each of the services in search engines and the marketplace while focusing on the products already established.

How can Phred utilize microsites to broaden and deepen its offerings in contract services?

Let’s look at some advantages:

Focus

A company’s main website traditionally has to meet the agendas of disparate groups within the organization. As a result, it becomes too broadly focused and contains text that resembles corporate-speak more than marketing and sales language.

A microsite, on the other hand, can focus more easily on a specific topic, audience or action, and create an online experience that is more conducive to selling and persuasion, especially into new areas of services. Coupled with the right, targeted name specific to the product/service you get a boost in searches just by the name itself.

Flexibility

Making new product or services changes on a main website with many variables can often take more time and adjustments that desired. Changes from navigation, multiple page updates, SEO updates etc. can be error prone. With a microsite, marketing and sales executives can more quickly change offers, introduce events and switch text and images to take advantage of new opportunities. As fewer pages are involved, it is a faster and cleaner process.

Higher Conversion Rates

Test after test after test confirm that because microsites are more focused, they typically produce higher conversion rates than a company’s general site. This is one reason why Google and others recommend landing pages. With the controlled, more personalized user environments, these pages can be used in keyword campaigns. Concentrated messages with limited choices simply produce more clicks.

SEO

Microsites offer unique new ways to approach your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. For instance, although Phred Manufacturing has been around a long time – predmfg.com – just doesn’t say much to the search engines. Using waterjetcutting.com would be a great position for capturing waterjet cutting opportunities. (see Domain Name & SEO Advantages). Unfortunately, such top level names are long gone. But – phredwaterjetcutting.com works fine.

Other SEO considerations:

• Creation of keyword rich domain names will definitely give a great advantage to your new site or business, or a specific focus.
• Link building activities will mainly be targeting the homepage, rather than deeper pages.
• Optimizing the homepage is always more powerful than optimizing for deeper pages and results can be harvested more quickly.
• Conversion rates will hopefully increase as the micro site will give the impression of a specialist web site.
• It will show up on search engines as being more specific
• Customers don’t want to find a page that gives one sentence about everything; they want to find a whole page about the topic they are interested in.
• You can have various keyword-rich domain names that are highly valued by Google. With a consolidated site you would never manage to fit more than 1-2 keywords in your domain name.
• Your backlinks will mainly target the homepage as there isn’t any great need to link build for deeper pages. Many directories only allow links to homepages so there is a big advantage here.
• Your brand name will be very close to your product or service, thus some visitors will think they are at the right place. Specialists’ sites convert better in general.

Control

Ever hear of FaceBook? Well, if you are using it, essentially you are looking at a microsite with one major issue – control. Facebook fan pages have become incredibly popular marketing tools for businesses by providing, among other features, an easy way to communicate directly with customers and prospects. However, Facebook remains in total control of everything. It grants you permission to use its media property, dictates technical requirements and decides what data to share with you.

Most of the time, and for most companies, this is a fine relationship — until it’s not. That’s when having all of your marketing eggs in someone else’s basket may not be such a good thing.

Unlike any third-party media property, with microsites you control the entire experience and, more importantly, the data — i.e., the website analytics and user information.

A microsite and Facebook page can actually complement each other well by serving different needs. Many companies on Inc. Magazine’s list of “20 Awesome Facebook Fan Pages” use the pages to refer traffic to their own websites, microsites and tailored landing pages where they can control the relationship better and own all the data — including email addresses — produced from those connections.

Good Reasons To Use Microsites

• Your services are strongly associated to your brand name and for some reason that doesn’t work for a new product or service.
• You have a broad range of products/services but need focus in certain areas.
• You want to expand into new markets/products/services that can’t be adequately accommodated by your existing web site.
• You want to put a focus on a new market and not be lost in your current product line or services.
• You want to jump into a higher search (competitive) position against established competition.

Disadvantages of Microsites

What are the disadvantages of microsites?

• Cost of microsites’ development e.g. web-design, CMS development, link building, maintenance could be an issue. However, this is mainly an issue for those companies who have failed to plan and maintain their sites. Those with a plan in place usually see very little if any change in costs. Even so, any costs are far outweighed with the advantages.
• Link building will start from scratch. This can be significantly offset by selection of the proper website name and use of modern SEO designs.

There are essentially two tasks your website has to fulfill:

1. Be a user-friendly, informative website for current and potential clients to find what they need as quickly as possible and make contact with your company.
2. Be organized and up-to-date with what the search engines are looking for to determine the best results for their searches.

Unfortunately, in many cases, neither task is being fulfilled to the level needed to get the job done.

Put Life Into Your Website

We have literally taken over websites that have not changed in ten years. No product or service updates, inaccurate contact info, missing information – you name it. Like a rusting auto in the backyard, the website is just fading (or has completely faded) away.

Before anything can really happen with the search engines, your website must be up to minimum standards that represent a website of value by the search engines. If your website is not up to standard the search engines will not be spending quality time with it, nor finding any value in placing you in favorable search results.

Likewise, spend a few minutes on your site and a few of your competitors. Are you embarrassed? What do you think a potential customer would be thinking when doing the same thing. Who do you think is going to get the business? Unfortunately, not as many people see this as you would think.

To be honest, chances are you need a new website – especially if your current website is more than 4 years old. Things have changed that much. It does not have to cost a fortune, but it will make a difference.

Once you get a new site – make sure you keep it up to date. Search engines like change. This is one reason social media and blogging are so powerful in boosting search results.

Make your website a resource that customers will want to visit again and again. If your website does what it is supposed to do it will perform well with search engines.

Get On Google’s Good Side – And Stay There

- Publilius Syrus

For those of you who have been off world for the past couple of years, LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site originally designed for professional networking – in effect, a business Facebook. The difference is it works for the business to business environment at a much higher level with significantly less clutter and trash that turns people off. As of November 2011, LinkedIn reports more than 135 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. Talk about a network! And, even greater opportunities!

We’ll let LinkedIn sell their own products – a good video is available here.

Here is the takeaway – LinkedIn is not only a good tool to link and communicate with your entire customer and potential client base, but more importantly it is a great tool to establish and promote your company to the world. And, take it to the bank – Google and the search engines are all over LinkedIn. That’s why you should be also.

This reminds us of the early days of the internet gold rush. Everyone needed a home somewhere – so, some basic placeholder was put up just to have a presence. Terrible websites – even detrimental to the business, but a placeholder none the less. This is happening again – on LinkedIn. Thousands and thousands of professionals are networking, some with extended and detailed listings – including owners, and managers of companies everywhere. Great for you – less for the company.

To be honest, it’s currently very difficult to find companies using LinkedIn Company Pages to their full potential. You can find 100 people LinkedIn and working at the same company. Rich in details on experience, background and interests – yet, the minimum of a Company listing that does little to promote the Company, products and services.

This is one of those proverbial missed opportunities. A business that takes advantage of the full complement of LinkedIn tools for businesses can leverage it to stand out from its competitors – which is at the top of all marketing to do lists.

Want to improve things?

Put Some Clothes On It - A blank listing is going nowhere. Dress it up, fill it out – get the information on your Company up in force.

Build-up Followers – Just like any other social media, if you ain’t got followers, you ain’t got juice. Get with your vendors and other professionals and have them follow your company. Reciprocate the juice by following them. Most of you will have difficulty with this, but blog about your presence. Promote it on as many other social sites as you can muster. Get the buzz out! Then, keep your Company profile active with posts and updates.

Share Content – Once you have your listing up, enable and use company updates to share with your followers and the world. Just like your website, keeping it updated and engaging is the best way to attract new followers and keep current followers interested.

Put Up Your Products and Services – For goodness sakes – isn’t this the reason you’re in business? Put in the details – what you offer and why you are better. This is where the rubber meets the road. Promote special offers and details that at least promote your efforts. This is your sales page. Make it sell!

Get Some Recommendations – Testimonials are always good. Testimonials on LinkedIn are even better. Use the “Request Recommendations” button to ask clients, fans and friends to put in the good word.

Be Creative – Add banners, videos – whatever you have in the sales bag. If you don’t have them, maybe you should create them – for LinkedIn and your website.

Link In to Your Blog – Have a Blog? Maximize it. LinkedIn allows you to RSS feed your blog to your company page. Makes it automatic.

Spread The News – Are you newsworthy? Then activate “Share news about my company” on the New Module. News that shows up on the web will be posted to your listing.

Promote Your Employment Opportunities – If you have job opportunities at your Company, why not post them on a large network of great potential employees? A cheap option to add to your arsenal.

Check Your Results With Analytics – LinkedIn offers built-in tools to measure and improve the performance of your Company page. Oh, if you’re one of those companies that don’t use analytics on your website – fix that as well.

Is your LinkedIn Page ready for prime time? Need help? Please contact us for details on how we can get you really LinkedIn.

Sometimes the focus was on capturing the company’s name – which is fine if your name is recognized market wide. Apple, Dell, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, etc., do not suffer in worldwide recognition. Their name branding will carry a large part of searches for their website.

But, how about the smaller company which does have such recognition?

Unfortunately, the focus in domain names for most smaller companies was what they were used to in yellow page or other listings where categories positioned them where they could be found.

Consider a scenario for a small plastics company in the late ’90’ – which we will call Phred Plastics Company. They were probably ecstatic to capture phred.com as their domain name. It related exactly with their company name, was easy to remember for their current customers, short to convey to new customers via phone or direct contact. It just seemed perfect.

Now consider how potential clients search for products or services in today’s marketplace. Unless the potential client knows the company name, keywords are the only means to find exactly what the potential client is searching to find. So, will a search for “plastics” find Phred Plastics? With a properly designed website rich in keywords, page titles, strong backlinks, etc. – the answer is yes. However, it may not be in an advantageous position to gather strong traffic. After all, there are thousands of companies competing in this space – as there are for almost all keywords.

Domain names rich in keyword identity have a major advantage in today’s SEO. Other things being equal, a website name including a focused keyword will get great positioning in search results. As well as a branding association with the specific business of the website.

Consider another scenario. This time Phred Plastics opted for phredplastics.com as well as phred.com. How might this have been better?

Search engines rely on the words in the body text and other areas of code on your website pages. If your site and domain name is highly related to the phrases you wish to rank highly for adding those phrases to your sites content will be so much easier.

The weight of your domain name can be considerable in getting better search results. In the case of Phred, using the domain name of phredplastics.com as the website name will give better search results. Having phred.com as the marketing name, with phred.com being directed to phredplastics.com gives Phred the advantage of using phred.com in all it’s correspondence with the full URL of phredplastics.com carrying better weight with the search engines.

Taking an additional step, if Phred was an injection molded plastics company, using phredinjectionmoldedplastics.com would furnish more focused search results for the longer string searches most of use today.

If Phred could go back in time and capture injectionmoldedplastics.com they could have the best of all worlds. Such focused domains carry great SEO.

We have seen any number of domain names that do little to help SEO. Contractions of names, initials, abbreviations, etc., all hinder SEO and do not facilitate easy name recognition for use in marketing.

Consider poorer options that Phred may have taken:

• ppc.com – initials, why not?
• pplast.com – contractions

Neither of these do anything for domain SEO, but are quite common today on many small businesses. Many such companies have had quality websites but find themselves still behind the search engine curve with companies with better domain SEO.

Can your domain name be fixed?

Yes. With proper restructuring and SEO, a strategy for improving your site’s domain SEO can be put in place which can greatly improve your search results.

Need help? Contact us…