Don’t confuse microsites with landing pages. Landing pages are typically single pages within microsites or parent sites that appear in response to a search result listing, marketing promo, marketing email or online ad. Companies use landing pages for lead generation. A microsite is not a type of landing page. By contrast, companies use microsites to communicate a specific message, generate interest, spread to a new market or simply engage users. Not everyone loves microsites. Some critics have noted that big brands favor microsites because they let them hire a cheaper or faster vendor for a smaller project separate from their main website’s codebase, budgets, processes, etc. Those same critics note that tracking microsites’ analytics can be extremely tricky – from an SEO perspective, they involve starting over without any of the parent website’s domain authority, PageRank clout or existing links. But for many companies, particularly those on the smaller side, the benefits of microsites can outweigh these potential negatives.