Introducing additional partner, micro- or promotional sites with the intent of increasing overall conversion rates has proven to be an effective strategy for several Inceptor clients*. Multiple sites tend to fall into three categories:
- Partner sites that fall under the umbrella of the main company
- Micro-sites to promote different areas of the business
- Promotional sites to target specific products or audiences within the company’s vertical
The challenge with all three is to increase conversions even as the competitive nature of the multiple sites threatens to raise the cost per click (CPC).
Situation
A client in a highly competitive financial vertical planned to launch two micro-sites in addition to its main website. Although each of the sites varied only slightly in messaging, the intent was to raise overall conversions by appearing in more places on the first page of paid search results for the same keywords. In effect, they wanted to take these spaces away from some of their deep-pocket competitors.
Challenges
While each site had its own unique purpose, the keyword lists for all three were exactly the same. This created a risk of driving up CPCs for the original site. In addition, the duplicate sites and keyword lists raised the potential for conflict with Google’s editorial guidelines for duplicate/mirror sites.
Solution
Inceptor advised the client against launching all three sites at once; instead we together decided to benchmark the original site for three months, optimize the account and use the data collected to create a plan for launching the additional sites.
During the three month test, Inceptor worked with Google to gain approval to add the first micro-site. After the data from the initial launch was analyzed, the site was activated using the same keyword list, but with CPCs set around 30% lower than the main site. This was to ensure that there would be no direct competition among sites.
After six months of running the original site and the first micro-site with the exact same keyword lists, and finding higher overall conversions, the second micro-site was launched. Originally, it was expected that it would rank lower than the first two sites, but this quickly changed when the conversion rate of the second micro-site nearly doubled that of the first.
Results
Managing an account with three sites all competing for the same keywords seemed, at least initially, to be a risky idea, but with careful planning and optimization, the strategy proved sound.
- Adding the first micro-site increased average monthly clicks by 68% while average spend increased by only 60%
- Adding the second micro-site only increased average monthly spend by 4%
- Average monthly conversions increased by a total of 114% after the second micro-site was launched
