subject: Should You Build Authority Sites or Mini Sites? [print this page] Should You Build Authority Sites or Mini Sites?
Whether to build a minisite or authority website all depends on what you want to accomplish with it. Part of the whole debate revolves around conflicting goals between online businesses and the needs of the search engines to provide high value sites with a lot of content. People choose minisites for definite purposes, and so in that sense they need to balance that with what the search engines want. While only operating with a network of minisites, that approach does require a certain amount of risk and greater effort. On the other hand, promoting an authority website, or blog, will give the owner more freedoms and flexibility. No matter what, mini sites can still be skillfully employed in your business.
Some people like mini sites because they think it's easier to make money with them more quickly. This strategy can be effective. To think only of short term profits, however, can be a limiting point of view. One possibility is to break a market down into profitable and very small groups of one or two keyword phrases. Then, simply create ten or twenty mini sites for that niche. If you chose your keywords well, you could get high rankings for most of them. It's fairly plain, however, that Google is not encouraging people to use this method.
Google has made sure that getting a minisite ranked highly is a lot more difficult than it used to be. You can think of minisites and authority sites in terms of faster and slower - in that order. An authority site is much more like a long term investment in stocks. You can accurately think of it in terms of investing your efforts and some capital. Not everyone is attracted to buying financial stocks and holding them until they retire. When it comes to SEO and high rankings, then the authority site is much like a dinosaur that moves very slowly. Also, when an authority site is ranked at number one in a good market, it can be sold for a lot of money depending on things.
Authority sites can also be used to quickly build credibility. It's just more credible to visitors to read a large site that is filled with useful information. Many people simply make the leap that the person behind the larger site has a larger knowledge base to draw from. This alone will establish credibility for some people. This is a rare situation for mini sites. It's not impossible, but it is definitely rare.
We really can't give you any definitive answer about whether authority sites or mini sites are best. The fact is, each has its own qualities and they serve different purposes. The common elements these type of sites share are overshadowed by their different scales and purposes.
So then the question becomes one of what do you prefer to do? You also have to consider your goals when it comes to your website. Mini sites can be laser targeted and quickly built, while authority sites give you a chance to build a long term business.
