If you or you company are in the development stages of a start-up online business venture, you are probably amazed at the number of decisions that have to be make. One you should not fail to consider in your planning has to do with website size. Should you build a small website, a mini-site in the beginning, with the plan of building a virtual empire of such sites? Should you, alternatively, lay the foundation for a large website, although you would allow it to grow slowly rather than starting off as a large site?
Before I get into the pros and cons of each side of this dilemma, I need to let you know what this decision does not impact. The question is not related to how large your business will ultimately become. Companies that follow either approach can both eventually become quite large and successful. It also is not necessarily impacted your target niche. Both small sites and large sites can succeed in any niche.
I should alert you that reading this article will not automatically give you the right answer to this particular question of size. Instead, what I hope to provide is a set of some things for you to consider so that whether you build a small website immediately or lay the groundwork for a mega-site, you’ll understand that decision’s impact upon key variables now and in the future.
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. Thus with each new department in the mega-site model, there is a new set of search phrases upon which to focus. These sites are built upon what is often called the “silo” structure. As the large site grows to twenty departments or categories, the business with small sites might grow to twenty or more individual websites.
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. Conversely, the silo sites will take longer to mature, but they can eventually become competitive for the top level keywords as they simultaneously enter the fray for the more tightly targeted words and phrases. Eventually, the silo site might become recognized as an authority in the broader niche.
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. When you plan to build a large site, the architecture of the whole site (as it will eventually become) must be in place. Thus, it is more expensive to begin such a site, even though you may start nearly as small as the mini-site business. Mini-sites are much less expensive to build than it is to build the foundation for a larger business site.
A second practical difference pertains to your approach to keywords. Any keyword research for a mini-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”) With the large site plan, you will conduct your research with two focal points: the lower competition but more targeted long-tails and the highest level, most competitive short tails (which are less likely to convert immediately, but the users of which might be nurtured into eventually becoming customers.
Issues pertaining to page rank is the third practical ramification of your large vs. small decision. Page rank is impacted by a number of variables in search engine algorithms (formulas), but one of those is the number of pages that a site has (assuming that the site has a search engine friendly linking structure). Consequently, it is easier for a large site to achieve a high page rank than for a small site, although you must remember that other variables are even more important in maximizing the total page rank.
So I hope I have given you ideas to chew on, even though I haven’t provided an actual answer for you. Perhaps, though, these considerations provide you with an inclination as to what you ought to do given your own unique business circumstances.