Comments on: Optimizing Search Engine Rankings with Microsites

By: Bruce Chapman

Bruce Chapman — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:46:10 +0000

@Ryan domain names can’t really be abused because they are a scarce resource. Only a couple of people can own the keyphrase (via the .com, .net etc) in a domain, so it’s not open to widespread abuse. You can’t keyword-stuff a domain name. It’s not an economical way to spam search engines by purchasing every single domain name out there. Sure, people have built businesses by purchasing domain names and showing slender adsense arbitrage sites on them, but you’ve got to have massive volume for it to pay off, and it’s hopeless to think you can optimise like this for a lot of search phrases. If someone registers a domain name with certain keywords, then it’s pretty much a certainty that the content on that page is going to match. That’s why domain names rank well.

This strategy pays off in the long tail markets, where the search volumes are probably pretty low in the scheme of things, but for a niche market being able to dominate several search phrases is enough of a business case to justify a mini-site.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:51:37 +0000

Very interesting. So what do you think is the key to why the page ranks so well? If its a simple as key words in domain name then you would logically expect that this will have less effect in future because as people become more aware of it (and start to abuse it!) then it will become less of an ‘indicator of quality’ so you would expect the Gnerds to reduce its weighting.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:23:18 +0000

Sounds great Dennis, good luck with your new microsites!

By: Dennis Crane

Dennis Crane — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:56:37 +0000

Thanks for the idea, Dennis. Following your advice I’ve just created a micro-site for one of our products. I’m much curious to test how it really works.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:12:27 +0000

Bruce, microsites are definitely worth giving a try. We were quite surprised how good they worked for our niche.

By: Optimizing Search Engine Rankings with Microsites

Optimizing Search Engine Rankings with Microsites — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:09:55 +0000

[...] Read my full guest posting about microsites on 47 Hats. This entry was posted in Business. Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. « Introducing TestRail Test Case Management Software [...]

By: Bruce Chapman

Bruce Chapman — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:25:51 +0000

Thanks for this. I’ve been thinking about a microsite for a while, and have been recommending them to other people as well. I think they work well for specialty searches, especially local searches where the business/domain name doesn’t reflect the locality or specialty.

My problem was that I hadn’t been able to come up with some content that didn’t sound like a hollow long copy sales ad. This post has been inspiration for me to finally get one going.