Micro sites

[webboy1]

Hi,

We are deciding whether or not to put micro sites on a few of our domains or not. We have a few points we are discussing, and i thought i would ask web master world for their opinons.

We have a website, but also own a few domains that relevant to the main site. The obvious thing to do is to point these extra domains to the IP address of the actual site.

However, we have thoguht of putting a mini site on each of these extra domains. These mini sites will be full of keywords and links that are to do with the main site. The aim is that it will be 100% search engine friendly, with pointers to the actual site.

However, we are not sure if this is legal or not? Is it classed as a SPAM page? We think it cuts close to the thin line between legal and illegal, but are not sure.

Does any one have any opinons/facts on this topic?

Any opinions/advice/help appreciated.

Webboy

[lazerzubb]

I use microsites quite often, it's a very good way of helping the spiders finding the right pages on the other domain.

When i build microsites i still contain a high quality of the content so if the user lands on the microsite, they will still think it's valuable.

I don't think the search engines have any problem at all with it as long as the content on the microsite is valuable for the user.

[edited by: lazerzubb at 11:13 am (utc) on Sep. 12, 2002]

[Dino_M]

We use dozens of them don't go to mad with cross links and as Lazerzubb said keep the content quality high and you should have no problems.

[Shakil]

Th eother thing to consider is:

1, Are the domains getting very good traffic from type-in traffic?

2, Or are you looking to use the micro-sites as part of a wider SEO strategy, if so, dont 4get you will need ideally links into them 1st.

just my 2pence worth

Shak

[Jane_B]

At a bit of a tangent can I ask whether you (all of you out there) would advise registering microsites with search engines through "add URL" facility or just let spiders pick them up.

[lazerzubb]

I just collect inbound links to them, and let the spiders do the work.

[Dino_M]

I try and get them registered in the directories.

[adamcmoran]

When I used to work for an agency, we did quite a few microsite campaigns, that were very succesful and a couple that were not as good. Getting them into directories is a little hit and miss, as you are not really allowed to. I had an e-mail off a yahoo editor and a Dmoz editor saying that they were not allowed to except my entries because they were microsites. Saying that, it is still worth trying getting them in there, as I managed to get one of our clients microsites into Yahoo for FREE and it now is listed under many one word and two word popular phrases. Also if the domain names are relevant to the phrase you want to optimise it for then this will really help, especially in Google (i think).

I would say it is worth the time and effort.

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