Why You May Choose a Mini-Site for Your Enterprise
September 8, 2009 by RSS
Filed under Marketing Information
If you are just beginning in online business, either as a new business or as an expansion of or supplement to your already existing business, one of the first decisions you will need to make is what size website to build. A large site might become what is known as an authority site; that is certainly advantageous. However, a small site, often called a mini-site has its share of advantages, as well.
Here are a few potential reasons that you might contract for a mini-site, or even build it yourself:
1. A mini-site can rank in the search engine results for keywords with fewer external links than a large site.
2. It seems logical to start on a small scale and add other mini-sites as I am ready to grow.
3. I won’t have to have as much written for a mini-site as I would need for a bigger website.
4. I’ve noticed that most of the other businesses with whom I’ll be competing have small sites, and it seems to work for them.
5. It’s not as difficult, time consuming or expensive to build a smaller website.
6. My husband or wife forbids me to build a large site!
One could easily put together counter-arguments in favor of a larger site, but that’s not what we’re discussing here, is it?
All of those reasons are valid. Actually, I have no idea what your spouse said or what the implied threat was for disobeying. The other reasons make sense only if you conduct the all important preliminary research. The third rationale is accurate, however, you must recognize that you will need to do some periodic updates on your pages. The fourth reason is niche specific, and I don’t know what niche you are in; you’re the expert on your niche, so I’ll take your word for it. If we hold all other variables constant, the fifth reason is a slam-dunk–self-evidently true.
I have written elsewhere about the extreme importance of careful keyword research for a mini-site. If you go through that process properly, the first reason is true because you will be optimizing for just a few, closely related semantically, long-tail keywords. I recommend that you read my earlier article prior to continuing with this one, if any of those terms are unclear to you.
That leaves the second reason pertaining to starting on a small scale and adding more mini-sites within the same general niche over a period of time. Here’s how I recommend you go about that:
1. Keep that original list of keywords on your desktop–the list that you hired expert keyword researches to build or that you carefully built yourself.
2. You have already set up your first site for closely related keywords in that list that have long tails. Now look for another set of closely related keywords. Repeat the competition analysis, as described in the previous article. If this small group of keywords meet the standards suggesting that they imply commercial intent on the part of the searcher, the implement your second mini-site.
3. Using article marketing, a few directory listings and other external link building, begin your promotion with site two (while still continuing your work on the original site’s promotion).
4. Once that site is on its way toward improved search engine rankings and increased traffic, repeat the process for site number 3…and so on.
Over time you will find that you have mastered all of the viable keywords in your niche. Then it will be time to begin serious efforts to improve your conversion rate by testing as many variables within your site as you can identify. Only after you have maximized your traffic and conversion rate should you begin to consider launching an attack on the next niche.
A solid online business takes time. Learn, so that when you act, you will be acting efficiently…oh, and be patient.
