Microsites & SEO: Quantity Or Quality?

If your business operates more than one company or sells more than one brand, you may currently have more than one website or a main website and separate ‘satellite’ or ‘micro-sites.’ At one time, this would have given you the opportunity to create some links between the sites and to target more keywords by spreading them across several sites in order to improve your rankings.

 
However, since the notorious Google Farmer update in February this year, this is no longer such a beneficial way of doing things. Certainly, if you are a fledgling or start up business, you should definitely stick to one main site. Even if you are an established business, you should reconsider amalgamating your websites into one main one.
As everyone knows, a website with plenty of good quality content is much more likely to have a higher ranking with the search engines. By spreading this content over several websites, the effect is somewhat diluted and produces unsatisfactory results.
An old saying is “keep it simple, stupid.” In this circumstance it is quite appropriate, as searchers could be confused or even frustrated by the task of viewing several websites before they ultimately find the one they need. Worse still, the whole process (even though it may only take minutes of their time), could cause them to abandon the task altogether and look elsewhere.
For SEO purposes, the aim of a link building campaign is to get as many relevant, quality inbound links as possible. Links are at their most valuable when they ‘work as a team’ and are all aimed in one direction. If your links are spread around and going to various sites there is no benefit and in the worst case scenario, could appear to the search engines as link farming.

In most cases, separate websites should be avoided, unless they are for a specific purpose, such as a new product launch. On the whole, all they do is create more work for fewer results.