If you aren’t a one-man shop, then a microsite or two might work in your favor, especially in optimizing different aspects of your company/products and bringing in different target audiences. Before you throw a disorganized tumble of stuff into a microsite and link it to your main page, you (or your friendly neighborhood SEO analyst and expert) should sit down and plan out the content in detail. So, here are the next steps to figuring out what the point of your microsite is, and what you can put in it to get the thing up and running quickly.
#1) You’re Not Going to Make Any Money out of This: Just thought we’d get this out immediately. The purpose of a microsite is nothing more than to provide optimized content to improve your website’s performance, and increase your viewership. It may indirectly increase your worth, but don’t go into a microsite thinking it’ll bring in the big bucks. That’s what your main site is for.
#2) Don’t Cram Every Interesting Idea In There: Clutter and chaos does not equal optimized content. Figure out one strong theme for the microsite that somehow ties into your current main site, and build it accordingly. Most search engine optimization experts can help guide this process, or help you set up the right protocols for it.
#3) Diversify: This is an excellent opportunity to add some valuable affiliate links, FAQs, forums, How To guides related to your products/services and other things designed to get people talking and participating. You should have links to some content on your main page, of course, but not too many; the point is to get people interested, not to specifically peddle your wares. The idea is that if they like you, they like this site, they will trust your brand and want to shop your main site/use your main product/service.