BWMagic’s Internet Marketing Newsletter
Authority vs Mini-Sites, My Marketing Strategies For 2012
Authority vs Mini-Sites, My Marketing Strategies For 2012
As you probably already know, 2011 was a real wake-up year
for my online marketing techniques. The Panda Updates by Google
dispensed total havoc on my main source of traffic and sales
– article marketing.
In article directories like Ezinearticles.com, I saw many of
my top-ranked articles in Google fall from the radar, lowering
my traffic and search rankings. As a general fall-out, my main
site also took a big hit in the amount of search engine traffic
it received from Google.
However, thankfully, I did not put all my eggs in one basket.
Over the years, I did build 9 or 10 mini-sites, mainly springing
from topics on my authority site – these sites were not affected
by Panda and some actually rose in rankings.
Keep in mind, the Panda Updates was first called the “Content Farm
Update” and was meant to lower or de-rank sites which had a variety
of topics covered within one general site. Google judged this content
to be of little or poor quality and decided to penalize these types
of pages and sites in its index.
Many webmasters and site owners have questioned Google’s reasoning
here, why should some low-quality pages bring down your whole site.
Chances are extremely high, your site’s visitors will never see these
pages… it’s like saying you can’t have visitors in your home because
you have a messy attic or basement.
In addition, pages and sites which were overly SEOed or over-optimized
for the search engines were hit hard in these latest series of Updates
by Google. So too, was duplicate or non-original content. In the past,
I made the mistake of placing my articles on my sites as well as in
all the article directories… this confuses a search engine such as
Google and makes it hard for them to rank the original source of the
information.
When one door closes, another one opens.
While I am still working hard at redesigning my main site and have
not abandoned 10 years of hard work… I am cleaning out the attic and
fixing the basement. But, I have long learned on the web, you have to
adjust your marketing tactics to take advantage of what’s working
at the moment.
Actually, finding an exact domain name or search term, which has around
5-10k visitors a month or less and then building a small “high quality”
mini-site around the topic is a proven marketing tactic since the web began.
These highly focused sites often get ranked on the first page of Google
within weeks, even days.
With little or no promotion on your part!
This comes from the strength of your exact keyword domain – if you have
the domain/site for “buybluewidgetsonline” – changes are extremely high
you will get listed in Google for that phrase on the first page, if not
the top spot.
Again, this all comes back to Google satisfying its customers, if a
searcher finds what he or she is looking for by clicking your link,
Google has no choice but to list it in their index. Satisfy enough
of Google’s searchers, and your site will rise to the top.
Now, we are talking about mainly “low competition” keywords because
we are talking about small amounts of traffic. (You can use Google’s
External Keyword Tool to find exact-match keyword domains.) However,
if this traffic is highly targeted and results in good conversion rates (sales)
it is definitely worth your attention and expense.
Most times, the exact keyword domain, will trump your competition’s
SEO (link building efforts) in the majority of cases. You end up with
a site listed at the top of Google for your targeted keywords.
In 2012, I will be exploring and building more mini-sites to see
how they perform over the long term when compared to my main (bigger)
authority sites. Will keep you informed of the results.
Helpful links:
Use this page to check the Authority of a site or page:
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org
Are Exact Match Domains Too Powerful? Is Their Time Limited?
Google Caffeine: Will Keyworded Domains Inherit The Web?
Helping People Succeed Online Since 2002!
Titus Hoskins
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