Why You Could Choose a Mini-Site for Your Online Enterprise

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, the size and scope of the firts website you choose to build will be among your first decisions.  A large site has its advantages, among them that it has the potential of becoming an “authority” site.  However, a small site, often called a mini-site has its share of advantages, as well.

Here are some reasons that you may decide to build a mini-site, or have one created for you:

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 is easier and cheaper to build a mini-site.

6.  My husband or wife forbids me to build a large site!

Anyone could easily construct a list of advantages for larger sites, as well, but that is not the focus of this article.

All of those reasons are valid.  Well, maybe not the one about your spouse; I can’t know about that one unless you write me to tell me.  However some of the other reasons are valid only if you do the necessary research before you begin.  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.  All other things being equal, reason 5 is self-evident.

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.  Do the same competition analysis for these keywords that you conducted on the first set (as recommended in that previous article).  If this set of keywords meet the same standards applied to those you used in the first site, then it’s time to begin mini-site number two.

3.  Using article marketing, a few directory listings and other external link building, begin your promotion efforts with site number 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.

Sooner than you think but not as quickly as you wish, you will have mastered your entire niche.  At that point, pause in your empire building efforts, so that you can focus on testing and revising to increase your conversion rates as much as possible.  Only after you have maximized your traffic and conversion rate should you begin to consider launching an attack on the next niche.

This won’t all happen in the first month; building a solid business takes time.  Be patient and act wisely, and you will definitely succeed.