If you or you company are in the planning phase of a beginning online business venture, you are probably overwhelmed by the number of decisions that have to be make. One you should not overlook in your business plan relates to website size. Should you create a small website, a mini-site in the beginning, with the plan of building a virtual empire of such sites? Should you, instead, build the structure for a large website, although you would allow it to grow slowly?
I should emphasize that this issue is not related to the size that you want the business to ultimately become. Businesses that operate a number of tiny sites can grow as well as those that concentrate on one major huge site. Neither should your decision be based upon some preconceived notion of your target market or your niche. Both small sites and large sites can succeed in any niche.
In other words, the answer to the question is not automatic, and I’ll warn you right now that I’m not going to recommend the “one magical size fits all” approach.
Small, mini-sites are focussed upon one narrow sub-niche. Generally, they concentrate upon dominating a relatively small number of keyword, often long-tailed phrases. Often the business model of such sites calls for the generation of traffic through means other than organic search engine optimization, although this is not always the case. Indeed, sometimes a mini-site becomes remarkably well optimized for those particular targeted keywords.
On the other hand, sites that begin with the ultimate design of growing very large are often focused simultaneously upon beginning with highly targeted long-tail keywords and also beginning to build a reputation for those shorter, high traffic search terms (the “parent” keywords, if you will). While the traffic model may begin with approaches other than organic search, the business will consciously focus from the beginning upon eventually relying increasingly upon traffic from organic search results.
The growth models of the two are very different after each has satisfactorily mastered the beginning, narrow sub-niche. Those who have taken the mini-site approach, will begin to duplicate their success by building a new, small site in another sub-niche with a new set of long-tailed keywords. Large site businesses will instead build another section onto their growing original site. This new section, over time, is joined by others (think of new departments being added to a sporting goods store, for example). Each new section takes on a new sub-niche. So, as the big sites grow ever larger with more and more categories, departments or silos, the business with mini-sites might create twenty or fifty or a hundred individual “storefronts.”
As a general rule, the mini-sites can establish positive cash flow more quickly. Part of this is due to the larger site having to invest resources in chasing the higher level keywords, which the mini-site is likely to ignore. In the long run however, over the course of many months or even years, the mega-sites can become competitive for the high traffic keywords and might even become recognized as an authority in the broadly based market.
I’ll point to three practical ramifications of how you decide to approach this business decision.
The first has to do with start up cost. Although you’re still beginning relatively small with the site that you plan to become large, the foundation for a larger site must be laid. That means that the site’s eventual architecture must be created and the systems put in place that will eventuall become necessary for operation. Consequently, although the mini-site and the eventual mega-site may be the same size at launch, the model for the larger site costs more at start-up. Laying the foundation for silo sites is inherently costlier than the smaller, less expensive mini-site.
A second practical difference pertains to your approach to keywords. Any keyword research for a smaller site will be undertaken to locate a limited number of closely related long term keywords. Special attention will be given to those keywords that are likely to convert immediately (keywords that are sometimes said to have “commercial intent”) If you opt for the silo site, you will be splitting the focus of your keyword research. In one way, you will be imitating the search of your small site competitors by looking for those longer tails that are higher converting, but you must also identify all of the high traffic keywords so that you can begin to attract visitors who are gathering information rather than ready to make a decision to buy or sign a contract.
The last practical ramification has to do with page rank. The number of pages in a site is one of the variables that is part of the page rank algorithm, assuming the internal linking structure of the site is well optimized. Thus, it is more difficult to achieve a high page rank than it is for a large site because of its inherent value on that variable.
So I hope I have given you some food for thought, even though I haven’t provided a clear cut answer to you. Perhaps, though, these ideas give you an inclination as to what you ought to do considering your own unique business circumstances.