Microsites for arts projects

In my job at a publishing company we often have to create special one-off mini-websites for individual books, book series or for the books by a particular author. These are in addition to the book’s page on our main website. They act as focused marketing sites for books that are likely to sell well.

Similarly, every new movie has its own website with its own domain name - they’re not all just pages or sections hanging off the main Universal, Paramount or Twentieth Century Fox website.

Conventional Search Engine Optimisation wisdom tells you not to do this because your incoming links get diluted - some go to one website, some to another, rather than all pointing at the same website and increasing its search engine rankings.

So why do the film studios create separate websites for every movie they make? Why does the Publishing company I work for create unique websites for certain books?

Because a separate website—a microsite—for a new film/book/product/project makes it in some way more special. A dedicated microsite also attracts more links than the same number of pages hanging off a main site (I don’t have any empirical evidence I can give you yet - I can’t publish statistics from my day-job or from previous professional roles: you’ll just have to believe me that I’m not lying when I say this!).

While SEO is important, sometimes understanding human behaviour is more important than optimising your site for search ranking algorithms. And dedicated microsites seem to appeal to people. If done correctly, a microsite lifts your project out of your ordinary promotion and makes it truly special.

So, to put my money where my mouth is, this weekend just gone I created a microsite for The Book of the Erinyes, my current art project of a limited edition series of artists books. It’s quite a simple website - four static pages plus an embedded WordPress blog dedicated to this project. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’d be interested to know whether any of you artists/musicians/writers have also tried this approach? Did it work for you? If you haven’t tried it, would you consider it?

6 Responses so far »

wajid said,

August 12, 2008 @ 7:28 pm

i totally agree with the separation of projects onto different sites….going onto your Erinyes microsite allowed me to absorb what you are trying to do without the distraction of other projects….i have exactly the same principle with all the various things i’m involved in - Uniform, Ear Cinema, Scrapclub, Needlesoup, 2nd Gen - all have different sites with links to each other…..am working on a haptic interface generating sound at the moment called the Featherbox and will create a separate site for that too….i’m all for the distinction

Paul Watson said,

August 12, 2008 @ 7:48 pm

Thanks, Waj. Yes - I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that a microsite allows a visitor “to absorb what you are trying to do without the distraction of other projects”.

Dan Thompson said,

September 13, 2008 @ 2:15 pm

I run artistsandmakers.com - an arts magazine site covering SE England.

And we use micro-sites generated from the main CMS for smaller projects or to support groups we work with, usually just one-pagers like worthingfilmclub.com

They help to give projects or groups their own identity and Waj says, create a clear space for people looking for that one small part of what we do.

Tali said,

September 14, 2008 @ 5:28 pm

Hey Paul,
Fantastic tip!
SEO-wise, microsites (aka cluster sites) are considered a great way to create an indent ranking at Google (the ones where you have one listing for the homepage and right under that an indented listing for a specific article). Generally with SEO the more links to your site, the higher you rank.

Tali

Paul Watson said,

September 20, 2008 @ 9:17 am

Sorry for the delayed reply - I’ve only just got back from holiday.

Dan - thanks for the link for Artists & Makers - that looks very interesting.

Tali - yes, that works if the microsite is on the same domain, but if your microsite is on a separate domain then Google doesn’t give you indent rankings. So for my Book of the Erinyes website I miss out on the rankings boost I would get if it was part of lazaruscorporation.co.uk but I think the separate identity is worth the trade.