They say that no good deed goes unpunished and great things will eventually be spoiled. This happened to microsites in recent years. What started off as a great strategy was overused and abused by some vendors to the point that now many dealers are scared to touch them.

Here's a brief timeline in case you're not familiar with the evolution of microsites. ADM chief Ralph Paglia was actually one of the pioneers in the microsite world when he brought them to Courtesy Chevrolet a decade ago.

It was a secret weapon for a handful of dealers and something that very few vendors offered. They would bring in great traffic and could generate leads. Then, people started catching wind. Vendors started offering them and in some cases absolutely abusing them for both SEO and general spamming reasons.

When Google Panda was released in 2011 and then when Google Penguin was released in 2012, they went a long way to killing off low-value microsites, especially the automated ones. Many vendors stopped offering them.

Now, we're back as an industry to be in an upward swing. With fewer doing it and with the technologies improving, we believe that they are now a valid strategy again. To prevent them from being abused, here are a couple of key points about them:

• Do NOT Automate Them - The biggest reason the bubble burst in the first place is because too many companies in and out of the automotive industry started creating really low quality and often automatically-generated pages. These are worthless and will actually do some harm to your marketing.
• Stay Focused - We talked in-depth about microsites on our website, showing that it's extremely important keep a page focused on one goal at a time. If you try to accomplish too much, you'll actually accomplish nothing.
• K.I.S.S - You're not selling a car or describing a complex lease plan with microsites. You're just trying to get inquiries. Less is more. Don't overdo the content.

There are other best practices that we know have an impact, but the important thing to post about publicly is that microsites are, for the most part, dead. This means that those who "revive" them the right way can reap more benefits than ever before.