Best SEO Blog|Launch your site.

Here is a tip, a technique, and a debate. Can you effectively build a keyword-based microsite and use that site to leverage a primary or “corporate” site? Some people argue against the idea. However, I have written an article on SEO Theory that says the Microsite Mistake is the mistake.

Let me ’splain.

Let’s say you create a strong domain about, oh, search engine optimization theory. And then let’s say you create a domain about … oh … BEST SEO (call it the BEST SEO BLOG).

Let’s say you want one of those domains, like SEO Theory, to rank well for a specific keyword. Let’s pick one like, oh, “microsite mistake”.

Do you need a LOT of links to get to the top or nearly to the top of search results for that keyword? Well, since that is the title of a blog post on the extremely popular SEOmoz domain, chances are pretty good that a LOT of people will link to the SEOmoz blog with the keywords in their anchor text. You can expect to see this post appear on Sphinn, StumbleUpon, maybe DIGG, and certainly a few other social media sites.

Rand Fishkin is popular enough that he could probably count on people linking to a “Please Stand By – Technical Difficulties” post (of course, knowing Rand, he’d turn the need for such a post into an opportunity for humor, information, and community building).

On the other hand, I liberally used “microsite mistake” in the copy of the article (although not as liberally as I have used other keywords in spam-topic posts). Repetition is the key to search engine optimization success. Most SEOs have been taught to offload their repetition to link anchor text, a technique popularized in 2003 by the “Googlebomb” phenomenon (people in the SEO community actually discussed the technique in 2000 and then let it drop).

But here I am creating a relevant article that links back to my SEO Theory post with the targeted keyword. Why did I do that? Because I can.

You see, Best SEO Blog is a microsite. It stands on its own brand value and successfully ranks for a variety of keywords. Technically, SEO Theory is also a microsite (the flagship site or corporate site for Visible Technologies is Visible Technologies). So here I am linking to a microsite from a microsite.

Shame on me for engaging in shameless self-promotion. It’s scandalous! It’s an outrage! It’s unbelievable! It’s shocking!

It works. It works. It works.

Now, I’m not saying you should go out and create a lot of worthless blogs for link building. In fact, before I wrote this post I checked the Google rankings for “Microsite Mistake” and SEO Theory was already ranking 2nd for the keyword. SEO Theory may never take the top position from SEOmoz (after all, a LOT of people are going to link to the SEOmoz article, if only because of the debate between me and Rand on this topic).

What I AM saying, however, is that microsites can be used very effectively for search engine optimization. SEO Theory hit the second slot in a non-competitive keyword on the basis of copy. Sure, I could have done that with the Visible Technologies site but you have no idea of how many signoffs I would have to get in order to put an article like that on Visible Technologies’ corporate site. We don’t use it for blogging (in fact, the official Visible Technologies Blog is VisInsights).

It was just easier for me to prove the point with a microsite. Some corporate visions are larger than one keyword. Any one Web site should be larger than one keyword. In fact, you can learn to make any Web page larger than one keyword.

THAT is the power of content-based search engine optimization, and it can never be equalled in power, efficiency, and effectiveness by link-based search engine optimization.

So go forth and use your microsites wisely. The only real mistake is to not learn how to do microsites right. If you want a single keyword microsite, sure, do it. But make sure it’s a darn good site, something people want to link to.

BTW — if you want to see an example of a poorly optimized single keyword microsite, check out Fantastic Four Movie. Ask yourself: why doesn’t this site (www.fantasticfourmovie.com) rank first for “Fantastic Four Movie”? Microsites can certainly fail. Many do. But that’s not because it’s better to put all your SEO into one domain.