Out of the Fog Marketing

A microsite is an individual web page or group of web pages which are used to support, enhance, or supplement the primary or parent website. The main difference between a microsite and the parent site is its focus on one main topic or theme compared to the broader scope of the parent site. Often, microsites are used to target new markets or to create focused content for niche audiences (sometimes geographic specific). Offering companies a chance to add value to their brand by informing, entertaining, engaging, and interacting, microsites can also be optimized with keywords for better search engine rankings and click through rates.

1. Choosing the size and scope of your microsite is very important. How large and in depth your microsite is may very well depend on your resources and budget. You could simply make a one-page microsite that acts as a great landing page for a pay-per-click campaign and links back to the parent site or it could be a fully functional, self-contained mini website with its own contact page and e-commerce engine (if you are selling products). Adding user generated content features such as forums, enabling comments, and file uploading should also be considered at this stage.

2. Deciding on a domain name depends on several factors. If the product or service is something not normally associated with the parent brand, then it may be best to consider a secondary, non-branded domain name. Keep in mind, however, that branded URLs generally produce higher click through rates. You may also consider sub domains (microsite.yourcompany.com) or sub folders (yourcompany.com/microsite).

3. The microsite’s topic, information, and call-to-action should be compelling. Once you get a visitor to the site, you should provide content that guides the user down the path you have planned. That end goal could be filling out a form, calling a number, downloading a white paper, making a purchase, or simply clicking over to the parent site. Tracking these goals is crucial and can be done easily with a product such as Google Analytics.

4. It’s important to consider how to tie the brand into the microsite. It could be as simple as placing the brand’s logo somewhere on the site and having multiple links back to the parent website. Using a similar color scheme and design style as the parent site can also help to create brand recognition. For smaller brands, the microsite may act as a launching pad to introduce the brand to a new audience.

5. Microsites can and should be optimized for search engines. Take advantage of the focused content you are presenting by using topic-specific keywords and key phrases throughout your microsite.

6. If you build it, they will come... but only if you promote the site. Once your microsite is launched, be sure to let everyone know about it by utilizing your internal email list, PPC campaigns, social networking sites (Facebook, Digg, Reddit), and industry-related blogs.

Labels: search engine optimization, web marketing

Check out Carrie Hill's great advice this week on writing copy for search engines. There are some simple tips such as using tildas instead of pipes or dashes on a web page title to stand out from the organic search crowd. Carrie also offers some great advice on formatting pay-per-click (PPC) ads.

Labels: carrie hill, copywriting, lseo copy, pay per click, ppc, search day, search engine optimization

Here's some useful info on optimizing PDF for search indexing from the folks at SEO Panda.

Should you include PDFs in your optimization strategy for your web site? The answer is a definite Yes. PDF are the standard for sharing and displaying documents on the Internet. The question is: Can Search Engines find them and optimize them accordingly to a specific strategy?

You have seen and maybe even quite often Search Engine Listings to a PDF that has a non-sensical title and description not related to the content of the PDF. This is because the Search Engine is trying to make sense of PDF document that is not probably optimized. Most Search Engines esp Google can index PDFs, but some work is required to get it properly optimized.

First off, make sure you actually have text in your PDF not just images. Next make sure you have a document that is structured with text that follows your SEO objectives for that document. The "reading order" is the natural way in which the Search Engine sees the text in your document. The "reading order" can be viewed with a PDF creation and editing tool such as Adobe Acrobat by selecting Advanced>Accessibility>Touch Up Reading Order form the top menu bar. Use the Touch Up Reading Order feature to change the order in which text gets read or indexed by the engines. You can also use PDF tagging feature to force engines to read your document based on your tag structure. Engines can see links in PDFs so think about using PDFs as part of your internal and external link building to increase visibility and authority of your site.

Labels: adobe, improve search engine rankings, pdf, search engine optimization, SEO

I had a really interesting call from a prospect this week. He found our firm on Google by using a search term that never crossed our minds to put on our keywords list. We did not search engine optimize our site for this term. After I scheduled our first meeting with him, I quickly typed the search term into Google and found we had the #1 ranking for it.
So if we didn't search engine optimize for it, how did it get to be #1? Well we do have a good number of back links to our site and all the code is in the right places. But more importantly in my mind - we wrote copy on our site that really describes our business service offerings well.
If you write great, simple, and straight-to-the-point headings and copy those leads will come your way.

Labels: backlinks, keywords analysis, search engine optimization

Site Maps Point the Way to Better Search Rankings

One of the simplest things you can do to improve your company's natural search rankings is post a well-constructed and properly coded site map on your website. Site maps are a great way to be found by the search engines. A properly-constructed site map provides anchor text links to pertinent pages throughout a Web site.

For small sites below 100 pages, you can provide links in the sitemap to every page. Larger sites should categorize the site and provide links to only the most relevant pages throughout the site.

Google's Webmaster Guidelines page has several tips for creating and then submitting your website's sitemap.

Labels: Michigan SEO, search engine optimization, sitemaps, web site maps, website development

Checking Your Links
Web1Marketing has a great set of tools for those firms interested in search engine optimization. I've written before about the importance of quality backlinks - your firm's URL listed on other sites. You can check the number of links to your website AND sometimes more importantly your competitors' websites at Web1Marketing's backlink checker.

Labels: backlinks, search engine optimization, SEO tools