Microsites, what are they good for?

Ok, first of all I've got to apologise for not posting last week, I got distracted with other things, but I did feel bad for not doing it though!
Since this is something I'm currently dealing with in my job, I'd like to talk about microsites or sub sites and how useful they can be for a company, from an SEO and customer and brand standpoint.

What is a microsite?
In my opinion, a microsite is a product or advice driven site of 10-15 unique and optimised pages designed to work in conjuction with your corporate website. There can be many reasons for a business to build a new site and we're going to look at some of those below. In this post, I'm only going to talk about sites that are meant to stay live for a long period of time rather than temporary promotional sites.

Microsites & SEO
I know it may sound obvious, but whatever your reasons are for buidling a microsite, it should obviously never be only for search engines. As with everything in SEO, building something for spiders is very likely going to be at least grey hat and at worse it'll get you banned from google....
This of course doesn't mean that you should not build new sites without search engines in mind. A new site(s) for your business is a good way to be ranked for new keywords which may not be part of your main website. The fact that it has a new URL could also allow you to have 2 or more sites ranked for keywords or their derivatives (maybe long tail), meaning extra traffic and potential business leads.
In terms or URLs, you can either use a completely new one or create a subdomain such as http://xxxx.yourdomain.com. Search engines will treat this URL as a site on its own, and SEO recipes to be used should be the same as for any other site: onsite optimisation, link building and a pinch of social media for good measure.

Microsites & your customers
As mentioned before, you must have good reasons to buid a microsite and your customers are the main target for these new sites. You may come to a point in your business where your corporate site has grown enough and the width of your product range is preventing you from achieveing good results in SERPs because of keyword dilution. In this case, a microsite can help you focus on a specific product and target it at a very specific audience.
You may also build a new site to give more information to your visitors, be it for support, tips or even a company blog.
As with everything in a business, customers and their needs come first so there is no point investing resurces in new sites if you don't need them.

Microsites & branding
From a branding point of view, a microsite can be a very effective way to promote a brand extension, a new product range or a new venture. It is a safe way to experiment new online marketing techniques and target new audiences without affecting your core audience who can still go to your corporate site.
However, remember to keep some consistency with your umbrella brand in order not to send mixed messages to visitors and always have a brand strategy in mind.

Since i'm going through the process of build a network of microsites at the moment as part of the online strategy for my company, I'll keep you updated on progress and results.
Have a good weekend!