What is a microsite? A plain-English guide for local businesses

Updated 2 October 2026 · 6 min read · Microsites

A microsite is a small, separate website with one job: one service, one service area, one product or one campaign. It usually has a few pages to a few dozen pages and its own domain or subdomain. A business keeps its main website for everything, and uses microsites to rank for focused searches that the main site does not win.

Microsite vs website

Three common types of microsites

• Campaign microsites. A brand builds a small site for one launch or one event. It often closes when the campaign ends.
• Service-area microsites. A local business builds a site about one service in one area, for example roof repair in one county. The pages answer the questions people in that area ask. The Local track covers this type.
• Product and free-tool microsites. A software company builds a site around one free tool or one use case, to reach people who search for that problem. The SaaS track covers this type.

When a microsite helps SEO

• Your main site is about everything, and loses to sites that are only about one thing.
• You serve towns or jobs that your main site barely mentions.
• You want to test a new service or area without changing your main site.
• You want a clear source of calls: a microsite with its own tracked number shows exactly what it brings.

When a microsite does not help

• Your main site has big basic problems. Fix those first.
• You cannot write anything real and useful about that area or service.
• You plan many copies of one site with only the town name changed. Google treats those as doorway pages.

Rules that keep a microsite safe

• Use your real business name, address and phone details. Never invent a business or an address.
• Never create a second Google Business Profile for a place where you have no real location.
• Write real facts for each page: local details, real jobs, real prices or price ranges.
• Link the microsite and the main site where it helps the reader, not in a hidden network.
• Let Google and AI assistants read the site, and put a sitemap in Search Console.

How to start one

1. Pick one service and one area with real searches and real jobs behind them.
2. List the questions people ask about it. Each question becomes a page or a section.
3. Write each page with the answer first, then proof: photos, prices, reviews, local facts.
4. Publish on a simple, fast host, add it to Search Console, and give it its own tracked number.
5. Watch impressions and calls for 90 days before you build the next one.

For a roofing example of these ideas in action, read roofing lead generation.

Written by the Microsite Strategy team. We publish our sources and mark anything we cannot prove. Search data pulled October 2026, United States.