What is a microsite?

A microsite is a site with a specific purpose that exists outside of a main website. It usually has a short lifespan and drives visitors towards a defined call to action.

Microsites usually have a dedicated domain name or subdomain, which sometimes includes the name of the organization or company that owns it. 

Various organizations and companies have used microsites for a range of purposes:

• To promote a marketing campaign ‒ this boosts brand awareness and focuses on drawing people’s attention to a specific product, service, or event.
• To reach a specific audience ‒ by building a list of prospective audiences based on specific demographics, interests, or ages.
• As a media site of a company ‒ used as a platform to publish ongoing content, this type of microsite usually exists for an extended period of time.

What is the difference between a microsite and a website?

While both have similar traits, they also differ in several ways:

• Time ‒ a website doesn’t have a time limit, while a microsite is typically seasonal and created for time-sensitive events.
• Content ‒ unlike a microsite that focuses on producing specific content, a company’s primary website contains thorough information about the owner.
• Sales funnel ‒ since microsites only have a particular call-to-action, they don’t utilize robust ecommerce functionality, unlike main websites.

Advantages and disadvantages of microsites

When used correctly to achieve appropriate goals, your business and organization can benefit from having a microsite.

For starters, users will have a focused experience. With a specific topic as its focal point, microsites help you get a higher conversion rate as visitors will not be distracted by other information.

Microsites also allow for more creative freedom, as the design can be adjusted to your main goal and target audience. In contrast, if you create a campaign page within your primary website, the page has to conform to the site’s overall look and feel.

Creating a microsite can boost your brand’s visibility as well. By researching your topic and keywords to maximize the microsite’s SEO, your microsite can rank well on search engine results pages (SERP).

That said, there are some concerns regarding the effectiveness of microsites.

For one, users might not be familiar with your microsite. There’s a chance that they’ll leave immediately out of fear that they’ve landed on a scam website. 

Building a fully functional microsite also requires extra expenses and effort. Just like any other website, a microsite needs hosting, domain, and its own design. Not to mention you need to develop and optimize the site’s SEO and content from the ground up. 

However, this can be avoided if you use the right website building platform.

How to create a microsite

Using a website builder like Zyro is the fastest and easiest way to build a microsite as all the necessary tools are available within one place. Here’s how you do it:

1. Choose a website builder template

Before creating a microsite, you should know what your end goal is. Is it to raise awareness, promote a product, or publish certain information? 

Based on your objective, go to Zyro templates and find a suitable layout for your goal. Click Preview on a template to see how it looks, and select Start Building to pick the design.

2. Create your microsite

Before adding your content, modify the design to your liking. Make sure to stick with your branding idea throughout the customization process. 

On Zyro’s visual editor, all elements of the template can be moved or edited by dragging and dropping them. You can also add new items such as images, videos, or buttons.

After editing your microsite’s visual look, insert all the content of your marketing campaign. 

Don’t forget to add your social media accounts and other contact details, such as a phone number and email address, to make it look credible.

Feel free to add new pages and sections on the visual editor if your microsite needs more than one page.

To save your changes, click the Publish button, and create a Zyro account so you can go back to the design later.

3. Publish your new microsite

Your microsite will need a domain for it to go live. At Zyro, it’s possible to use their free domain name or connect to a custom domain.

Once you have clicked the Publish button, both of those options will be presented to you. If you don’t have a custom domain yet, you can purchase one straight from the site editor.

Are microsites good or bad for SEO?

Some argue that you can utilize microsites to improve the SEO of your primary website. The idea is you build several microsites and then link back to the main site. The more backlinks you have, the better your SEO will be.

While it sounds great, it’s not advisable to create microsites just to improve your main website’s SEO. Your microsites will be flagged as spam, and you might risk getting penalized by search engines.

For this reason, if you want to start a campaign using a microsite, make sure that the content is different from the one published on your main website.

Since a microsite is a website and not a landing page, it competes with your main site to get a higher rank on SERPs.

If you want to increase your SEO performance, you should optimize your main website instead. Focus on producing quality content, improving site speed, and making your site easy to navigate. Other sites will not hesitate to link back if your website is useful for their readers.