One of today’s SEO questions came from Louisville’s Kate, who wrote:
“I work for a company that builds microsites for clients.
What factors do I need to focus on when organic traffic drops?
For example, in Q4 2021, we rebranded and changed metadata.
Will this have a huge impact on future transportation? “
Strictly speaking, search engines treat microsites no different from regular sites.
They still look at URLs, links, titles, content and hundreds of other ranking factors, so the same SEO best practices Diagnosis ranks down Will also work for microsites.
Let’s talk about traffic drop first
I wanted to share some thoughts on microsites in general, but before we do, let’s see how to deal with it traffic drops.
The specific answer to your metadata question is: maybe.
If you radically change your title tag from something relevant to your page to “home page”, your queries may not rank as well, and if you do rank you won’t get many clicks.
(Kind tips: meta description And keywords are not a ranking factor in major search engines.However, a description were able Has an impact on your CTR – when Google decides to actually show the one you wrote. )
The good news is that changing it back to see what happens is a very easy and quick test.
When traffic to any website drops, the first thing to do is to understand where the traffic drops.
Is it a specific query or a set of queries? Is it a specific page or a group of pages? Is it all site?
Look for patterns. It might be a “style” of a keyword (eg, a keyword around a specific part of the site), or it might be a page template.
This information can guide you where to look.
Once you figure out where the traffic drops, search for that query/page and see what happens.
If you don’t show up at all, check your site for technical issues.
If you showed up, did anyone else jump to your spot?
If you lose your rankings, you should first ask what changes were made to the page.
usually unwanted title tags or content changes or Random technical question May be wrong.
Assuming the failure has not changed, the next step requires some introspection.
Ask yourself: “Is this really the best result for the user? Is this what I want if I’m searching for this query? Is it better than my ranking?”
Oftentimes, as SEO professionals, we think about push marketing — “how can I get this page to rank for this query”, but the real success comes from having a pull marketing mentality of understanding what users are trying to do and creating something that can make it happen. a target thing.
we see this is a a lot of recently with Google Core Update.
Search queries used to return product description pages now return recommended and curated lists of the best products in the category.
Google decides that these pages serve users better than individual product pages.
If something similar happens in your area, the only solution is to re-evaluate your content the context of the query and what the engine displays.
Usually, this is neither fast nor cheap, but it is the best way to succeed.
ok, let’s talk about microsites
I’m not a huge fan of microsites except in rare cases.
Big brands like them because they can hire cheaper/faster vendors for some smaller projects and keep it separate from the main site’s codebase, budget, process, etc – but there are a lot of downsides too.
I’ve seen companies implement microsites to the point where the user flow becomes like this: Enter on the main site, click a promotion to go to the microsite, then click another call to action to go back to the main site.
This seems like a lot of unnecessary overhead and introduces more conversion starting points.
It can also be an analytical tracking nightmare.
From a strictly SEO perspective, a microsite is started over without any of the main site’s PageRank, link juice, or domain authority.
Whether you believe these metrics or not, Links still matter – Microsites usually have fewer page links than if they were placed on the main domain.
Another problem is competition. Microsites run by another agency often don’t work with the agency hosting the site, and they end up competing for the same keywords.
In some spaces, it might be a good idea to have search results and push down other pages – but the key here is planning and collaborating with the main site.
Having multiple search results or pushing additional content for ORM (Online Reputation Management) may be one of the reasons for your choice think a microsite.
Paid Search There could also be another reason.
Google and Bing don’t allow you to serve two ads from the same domain, but if you have a microsite, you can place 2 different ads in the same query.
But in general, if there is no good reason for A microsite, I recommend just creating a new page or section on the main site.
When in doubt, let UX dictate the decision, not SEO.
If it’s branded differently, or has a good reason to keep users apart, make a microsite.
If not, you will achieve higher rankings and greater success by including it in your main domain.
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