As companies grow and evolve, business owners sometimes find themselves taking on new ventures or scaling up a service within their existing company. This could be a subservice within a main brand or a sister company targeting a new audience, and requiring a new branding campaign. Either way, there should be careful consideration on how to market your entity online — whether to create a completely separate website or keep the content within your existing site? Some questions to ask off the bat:
- How will two sites affect your search strategy?
- Should the brands stand alone?
- Will content be related among the two entities?
Depending on your business goals, we’ve got some answers for you.
Share the wealth or steal from yourself?
If you think that having two separate websites is going to double your chances of getting website traffic, think again. While spreading your content across the web might seem like a good idea, you may want to think twice before implementing this option. Here’s why:
Both sites will be competing for the same searches
Spreading your content out can actually lessen the value of both sites. Organically, Google favors websites which have large amounts of quality content, so if you are creating two separate websites with related topics, you are really spreading the content out over two domains and forcing them to compete against each other for rankings.
More time and effort
If you want to be seen as an authority leader on an overall topic, content has to be built over time. It is less of an effort to do this for one site rather than two and it is better to have one well-ranking site rather than multiple mediocre sites.
Fewer inbound links
Inbound links are another important ranking factor. Spreading out inbound links “spreads out SEO” which now means both your sites are competing for these as well.
Spammy backlinks
If you intend to constantly link your microsite to your main site to provide backlinks, it is ok to do this in some instances, but with too much linking, Google will catch on and see this as spammy.
Why not post your content on both sites?
Having two websites with the same content can also stunt your SEO efforts. If the same article lives on multiple websites, Google will only index one of them or else your sites will be flagged for having duplicate content. Therefore, you must tell Google which domain should rank for this piece of content using a canonical tag. In this case, only one site will get the traffic — not both.
Build on your SEO and create a subdirectory
If you want to maximize your organic presence, you may want to consider creating a subdirectory off of your main site, and treat it as pillar content. A subdirectory acts as a section in your main site like this: mainurl.com/sudirectory.
Your new content within this directory will benefit from the search authority of the root domain and will be reinforced by the accomplishments of your main site. The content cluster you create around this topic, will bring in the opportunity to build up internal links and create an organized site — making it easier for Google to understand what your content is about.
Additional benefits to creating a subdirectory:
- Creating content within an already built website means less development time and less cost
- Inbound links will increase within one site
- You wont need to pay for a completely separate domain or set up a new hosting account
A microsite vs. a landing page
A landing page is a single web page used to capture leads or entice users to perform some other action. Visitors don’t find landing pages by browsing your website. Your marketing campaign (through email, paid SEO, social media, etc.) drives the visitor the the page. Landing pages limit exit points in order to increase the chances the visitor will complete the lead capture form or other desired action.
Microsites and landing pages are two different means for dealing with a brand extension and they share many similarities.
Both microsites and landing pages:
- are smaller than a main website
- can live on the main website’s URL
- are created to target a specific service or campaign
The differences between landing pages and microsites:
- Single vs. multipage: A landing page is a single page and has limited exit points. A microsite is a mini website which contains more than one page.
- Cost and complexity: A landing page will take less time and money to create than a microsite.
- Brand relationship: A landing page is part of the parent brand while a microsite can be branded on its own.
- Competing for clicks: A landing page will not compete with a main website’s SEO — a microsite will compete if it lives on a separate domain from the main website.
When to make the split
On the other hand, there are instances where it makes sense to break away. In the event that you want the new entity to be a brand on its own, or if you do not want the connection between this and your main site to be obvious, a microsite or subdomain may make sense. A subdomain works as part of the main url like this: sudomain.mainurl.com.
Subdomains vs. separate URLs
A microsite can also have a completely separate URL. Both will require more development time and do not have to be tied to your original website, however you can drive traffic from one to the other with caution (remember too much can be considered spammy). Both can be beneficial if the new entity serves a unique purpose that relates to overall branding such as launching a brand that is an extension of your parent company or running an event or promotion.
This can also work well if you are driving traffic directly to this website as part of a larger campaign such as email marketing, print marketing, social media etc. You can use this new site to drive traffic to your main site, but again do this with caution. While a completely separate site can create more highly targeted content and can be more engaging, for SEO purposes, it does work best for huge well known brands.
Growing your business and expanding into new ventures can be exciting but before jumping into online marketing, take a step back and think about your overall business goals. Do you want to create completely separate companies? Is SEO a concern? Is there shareable content between the two? Having a clear understanding of which direction you want to go in, will help you determine how to market your sister company online.