Online marketers have been debating the choice between an authority site or minisite for years. Search engines understandably want to provide solid and good content to the people who represent their customer base. (Even though Google’s massive profits are mainly derived by pay per click advertising.) People choose minisites for definite purposes, and so in that sense they need to balance that with what the search engines want. You can certainly restrict yourself to minisites, but just aware that you will not have as many options enjoyed by having a more eclectic approach to site creation. Although you can more successfully do that with an authority site. It is just that the minisite requires one to be a little more creative with their promotional efforts.
When you choose either a mini site or an authority site, you are casting your marketing net to capture a particular type of audience. Even when the two types of sites target similar markets, they’ll be doing so in a different manner.
If you have many products you’re promoting within a certain niche, you’ll probably need a larger authority site to do this. If you’re content to focus on a single product within this market, then a mini site would be all you need. So the direction you go is your own choice, and it really depends on what you prefer as a business model.
As you know, maybe, Google changes their algorithm to reward things they like and penalize what they do not like. In recent years, especially in 2010, Google has made it plain that it likes authority sites better than sites lacking in substantial content. When your site is ranked, a quality score is determined (as with pay per click), and thinner sites are penalized. This means that SEO with mini sites will now be quite a bit harder than it used to be if you want to rank well. When it comes to ranking or getting traffic to your mini site, your SEO efforts will not get you the kind of traffic they would have even a year ago. That’s part of what you have to consider when you do SEO.
Far more doors will be open with a highly ranked authority site than any minisite will ever have. You will see a lot of high ranking authority sites selling space for third party ads. Whether or not you can make a lot of money with that is based on many factors. Higher competitive markets and traffic can mean a decent monthly revenue from selling ad space for banners, etc. But you are not limited to selling ad space.
So, which to build – a mini site or an authority site? This question is not necessarily a newbie question, but rather it is just that more experienced people know what they want. But the bottom line is people have their own preferences. No matter what, you have to make the call about what you ultimately want to do with business. But no matter what, you will benefit from learning as much as possible about both authority and mini sites. Learn more on marketing your carpet blog.