subject: Mini-sites Vs Authority Sites - Which Is Right For You? [print this page] If you are a webmaster, you know that making a living in the virtual world takes work, hard work. Often it takes more hard work than a job in the real world. At least that has been my experience. For that reason, a search engine marketer or an internet marketer needs to make full use of any edge that they can obtain, especially due to the fact that they work in such a competitive environment.
This article discusses two different platforms for establishing an online presence. One is the mini-site and the other is the authority site. Each platform has distinct advantages. So how would a webmaster decide which platform is right for them? The answer is simple. They would choose both. Being that each has an advantage, a webmaster can capitalize on the strengths of each if done so in the correct order. To begin, lets examine the strengths and weaknesses of each.
The Mini-Site. Mini-sites are exactly what they say they are, very small sites. Generally, mini-sites consist of only a handful of pages. Typically, these include a small number of article pages, usually around five to ten, and the typical support pages, such as the About Us page, a Privacy Policy, a Disclaimer of sorts, maybe a Terms and Conditions Page, and possibly a Compensation Disclosure page as well as a Contact Us and a Site Map. Mini-sites typically use an "exact-match" niche keyword as their domain name. Usually, mini-sites rank very well for the keyword that they are optimized around. More often than not, this is due to the fact that they have an exact-match domain name, in addition to keyword-rich text and back-links. The drawback with mini-sites is that organic traffic usually only comes through search queries using only that keyword. Being that the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that is applied is so narrow in focus, this can at times "cap" the traffic potential of that site.
The Authority Site. Authority sites are much more broad in scope than the mini-site. They usually cover many more and varied topics. The domain name is usually brandable and is not confined to an exact-match search term. Authority sites usually have many pages of content and articles as well as landing pages in the form of sales or squeeze pages. These types of sites may easily contain thousands or tens of thousands of pages and may even contain User Generated Content (UGC). The traffic potential of authority style sites is much higher, but due to the fact that the content as a whole is more broad in scope, targeted niche traffic as well as their placement in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) gain momentum more slowly.
If you are searching for a niche to compete in but are not sure if it is profitable, the best thing to do would be to experiment with cheap mini-sites as they are small, easy to build and require only a minimal amount of content. Once you have launched a handful of these sites, you can begin tracking their performance and see if there are any that stand out in terms of traffic and profitability. If there are, then you can begin converting these into authority sites by filing these out with more content and creating more back-links to them and the content that they contain. Then you can monetize them by adding landing pages and opt-in forms to build a targeted subscriber list.
As stated previously, each type of site has distinct advantages. However, you can capitalize on the strengths of each as a means to finding a profitable niche. To make thing move along even faster, pick up some mini-site templates that you can customize.
