NB: This is a guest article by Doug Pierce, head of research at Digital Due Diligence .
Although its citizens may only make 0.014 flights per year, India also counts the second largest diaspora in the world, after China, with 24 million people.
MakeMyTrip is a bet on both markets: the maturity of the global Indian diaspora (and non-nationals looking to India for vacation) together with the double growth trend of travel and e-commerce within India.
A controversial part of the company's marketing strategy involves geo-specific microsites with exact match domains.
Big brands often use a microsite for a temporary promotion or sub-brand, eg. Pepsi's Refresheverything.com or Gerber's Gerbercollegeplan.com .
Such sites exist on separate domains and have content on very specific topics. Beyond their branding benefits , microsites also bring externalities that impact search engine optimization.
The strengths of running microsites:
Greater share of voice. Microsites can take up more positions on the search results page. This also helps with reputation management to push negative results lower.
Not to be associated with some corporate behemoth which can influence the likelihood of obtaining links.
Stealth launch of something you don't want people to know is associated with you.
Maintain total control of the links back to your main site.
Receive a rankings boost if you have an "exact match domain" (your domain has keywords that match the search query).
The weaknesses of microsites:
There's less point in building up multiple domains for greater share of voice as Google now shows more results from one domain.
Extraneous link paths which cause your main domain to not get the full benefit of backlinks.
Visitor confusion, as often the microsite and main site use different branding.
Although Bing may still be domain heavy , exact match domains don't count as much anymore for rankings in Google.
"This is the kind of ranking signal that's likely being tweaked all the time," says Vanessa Fox, a former Googler in a blog post about microsites , "and even if it works for a time, it's a poor foundation for a long term business strategy".
MakeMyTrip owns nearly 200 exact match domains like AmarnathYatra.net.in and HotelsInDelhi.net.in that they use as microsites.
These microsites are keyword rich, use top level .in domains, have a search box that funnels visitors to MakeMyTrip, and contain deep links to MakeMyTrip. Such a strategy combined with effective SEO on their main domain has helped MakeMyTrip capture lucrative India travel keywords, but not without some risks.
MakeMyTrip's microsites all have links with geo-specific anchor text in their footers back to one domain, registration data showing they're owned by the same entity, were created around the same time, and are all hosted by the same company.
These footprints should be more than enough for a search engine to deduce that these sites are part of a link scheme and discount the metrics that flow from them.
Therein lies a Catch-22: MakeMyTrip doesn't know if Google has caught on and are discounting the links from their microsites, and neither do they know if taking down the microsites would cause them to lose rankings if somehow they had managed to slip through Google's radar.
If the former is the case, they should take down the microsites and save the cost of renewal for 200 domains, but if not, then MakeMyTrip must weigh the rise in visitor acquisition costs from getting rid of their microsites against the risk of future penalty.
MakeMyTrip has two unpleasant options. They can bet that they're still able to stay ahead of the algorithms using scaled exact match domains as microsites, or they can take down their microsites and lose a low-cost stream of customers.
NB: We asked MakeMyTrip to respond to the article. An official says:
"We do own and maintain a few microsites, but the number is not even remotely close to 200. Many of these are variants and extensions of our brand and are for brand protection.
"A few others are specific content oriented sites, which are maintained
"But they don't fit into the brand navigation structure of our main site are hence maintained run as separate offerings. We do participate in online affiliate marketing that can some time give the impression that we own a lot of these sites.
"Micro sites clearly help in the short term, especially when you are trying to build out traffic. However, in the long term, you are better off with content hosted off your primary domain."
NB2: This is a guest article by Doug Pierce, head of research at Digital Due Diligence. The information contained above does not constitute an offer to sell securities or the solicitation of an offer to buy, or recommendation for investment in, any securities within the United States or any other jurisdiction. Any use of the information contained above is at your own risk.
NB3: In reaction to MMT's comments, Pierce points to the WhoIs register from MMT , which is associated with around 260 domains.
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