SUMMARY:
Are you a victim of microsite creep? A multitude
of dedicated URLs for specific campaigns or
product lines make it hard to coordinate search
activities and present a unified brand.
But consolidating those sites into one URL poses
its own risks – you don’t want to lose the
search placements and keyword coverage those
microsites have carved out over time. Here are
top tips from a marketer who unified multiple
sites and got an 83% lift in organic traffic.
Microsites
are a great way for marketers to segment their
online audience, support specific campaigns, and
provide targeted content for different divisions
and product lines. But microsite creep can limit
those benefits.
A proliferation of microsites can create a
variety of problems:
- Maintaining the same brand message across
multiple sites
- Frustrating Web searchers who aren’t sure
which site is right for them
- Overlapping content and keywords that point to
those sites
- Varying levels of SEO
- Using different metrics to gauge the success
of each site
Joelle Patten, Manager, Web and E-Business,
Johns Manville, faced that scenario. The
building products company had more than 20
microsites aimed at different audiences and
supporting varied product lines.
“Every time someone launched a new product, or
had a new promotion for a line of products,
microsites kept bubbling up without any real tie
to each other,” says Patten. “They looked a
lot alike, but each had their own campaign and
their own universe.”
Patten wanted to consolidate those microsites
into a master site. But many of those microsites
ranked high for key industry search terms. Any
consolidation effort had to include safeguards
that ensured they wouldn’t lose the search
engine visibility they already had.
Patten and her team undertook a painstaking
process to benchmark their existing
search-engine visibility, map those pages to new
locations within a consolidated site, and ensure
keywords were pointing to the right place. The
result boosted search traffic 83%.
Here are Patten’s eight tips for
consolidating multiple microsites into one
location:
-> Tip #1. Benchmark existing sites
and search coverage.
Analyze your existing Web presence first.
Examine each microsite to determine:
o Content it contains and what might be
redundant with other sites
o Audience it addresses, such as consumers, a
specific industry vertical, or a job description
o Keywords that drive traffic to that site
o Organic placement for each site, and past or
current PPC campaigns
Then marry that observational data with Web
analytics data, such as:
o Traffic rates
o Visitor demographics and online behavior
o Clickthrough and conversion rates for
calls-to-action
o Keyword rankings and top competition
For this task, Patten and her team used a
combination of in-house tools, such as their Web
analytics platform, and external tools, such as
online keyword research programs.
-> Tip #2. Analyze keyword strategy to
develop comprehensive approach.
Each microsite likely employs its own list of
key terms related to the product line and
industry or demographic targets. As you
benchmark each existing site, compile a list of
all keywords being used, and highlight:
o Top performers
o Laggards
o Overlapping terms
o Success of past SEO efforts
Next, analyze those terms in the context of a
comprehensive brand strategy:
- Patten worked with product managers to ask
whether they were covering all the key terms
their prospects would use in searches.
- The team also looked for terms that were
specific to particular product categories and
needed to be broadened.
For example, the company’s “performance
materials” division sells insulation for
various functions. The team compiled a list of
specific insulation-related terms, such as
“pipe insulation” and “mechanical
insulation” to make sure those searches would
be sent to the right locations.
Patten says the analysis was actually a good
opportunity to look again at words they were
using to make sure they were optimizing around
top terms and dropping under-performing terms.
-> Tip #3. Choose an existing URL to
host unified site.
What master URL do you use? That’s one of the
biggest considerations when consolidating
multiple sites.
Search engines tend to favor sites with longer
track records and established quality scores.
You can see better results by adding content to
those sites, rather than creating a new URL.
Johns Manville had a relatively restrictive
policy around its corporate URL. This police led
to the habit of marketers creating microsites
for specific initiatives. That policy also meant
consolidating microsites into the corporate URL
wasn’t an option.
Instead, the team chose to expand one of its
best-performing sites, SpecJM.com. That site
already had the most inbound traffic, most
external links, and the widest array of
search-optimized content.
“Instead of coming out of the blue with
something brand new, we tried to leverage as
much as possible what was a strong URL.”
-> Tip #4. Index existing pages and
create map for new site.
With benchmarking complete, the team began the
time-consuming process of indexing each
microsite page and mapping them to a location in
the new site architecture. The team examined
each page to determine:
- Role for potential visitors, ranging from
top-end, contextual information all the way down
to detailed product information, such as product
specifications.
- Enterprise taxonomy to put that information
into relevant context for both search engines
and visitors. By analyzing page text and metatag
information, they determined how to organize
pages according to contexts:
o Audience target, such as engineers creating
specs for a new building
o Construction concepts, such as “green
building”
o Product lines
- Whether additional, high-level information was
needed to direct people down an internal
navigation path. For example, product-specific
detail pages might need to be linked to a
broader, overview page outlining the full
breadth of the company’s products in a
category.
“We’re not just trying to redirect everyone
to the homepage or right down to product
page.”
After the mapping, the team undertook a manual
process to tell search engine spiders that a
page from a microsite had been moved to a new
location:
- The team added 301 redirects to existing page
URLs to point search engines to that page’s
new location in the consolidated site.
- They used redirects to point inbound links to
the master site.
-> Tip #5. Create new content to
bridge gaps between microsites.
Microsites are often written with a specific
audience or task in mind. Moving that content
onto a new site often leaves gaps in your
content or navigation strategy.
Patten’s team found that many of its building
product microsites were aimed at a specific
audience or focused on one piece of a building
project, such as roofing or air ducts. None of
the content had been written to address the
entire commercial construction market, or to
represent the Johns Manville brand as a whole.
“Because we were aggregating around a broad
market, that content had never been written,”
says Patten. “We had to create new content and
find those terms that are much broader.”
They tailored content for:
- Broad construction concepts – such as the
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
program and sustainability.
- Target industries – such as solutions for
the health care construction market.
- Brand attributes – such as the company’s
full range of products and services.
-> Tip #6. Connect forms and calls to
action to the right product group.
Many of the team’s existing microsites
contained contact forms, download registration
forms, and other communication channels that
provided a direct communication channel to a
specific division. When they consolidated those
microsites into one URL, the team had to make
sure all contact forms were still directing
prospects to the right group to answer their
questions.
- Visitors who came to a registration form from
one of the site’s new, general information
pages were asked a series of qualifying
questions to help route their query to the right
customer-support team.
- Product information requests were directed to
each division’s sales support or marketing
team for lead management purposes.
“The worst thing you can do when you combine a
site like this is have a bunch of roofing
questions go to the insulation person.”
-> Tip #7. Communicate proposed
changes internally and externally.
Communicate your plans and progress because you
are making dramatic changes to the company’s
online presence. Patten involved product
managers in the site consolidation process and
worked with customer service personnel who
deliver information and answers to prospects.
Also, they used external communications to tell
customers about the site changes. Tactics
included:
- Speaking with customers about the new site at
industry events.
- Email messages to house mailing lists of
contacts that had downloaded product information
or used other online tools.
They sent those prospects an email telling them
that the site they previously visited had moved
and the link to the new page location within the
consolidated site.
-> Tip #8. Use Web analytics to test
and monitor new site.
As soon as the consolidated site went live, the
team began monitoring its Web analytics program
each day. They looked for any problems with site
redirects, traffic flow and keyword performance.
Constant monitoring and frequent reports on
website performance helped identify:
o Navigation changes
o Pages that needed additional content or
keyword coverage
o Areas where new pages were needed
o Overall traffic patterns and lead-generation
rates
The change allowed the marketing team to develop
a comprehensive approach to its online marketing
strategies. It ensured that all product
divisions were monitoring the same series of
metrics to gauge site effectiveness.
“Some of these microsites were only getting
100 visitors a month, because they had very
specific content,” says Patten. “Now that
we’ve broadened the audience were talking to,
we’re getting thousands of people looking at
the site. If I’m a product manager, that’s
the piece I’m interested in.”
Article
courtesty of MarketingSherpa
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