MiniSites and Search Engine Strategies

Search Engine Strategies for Mini-Sites

Dan Thies

One of the most popular marketing concepts today is the
"mini-site." A mini-site is essentially a one-page sales letter,
linked to an order form, specifically designed to sell a single
product or service. While mini-sites are very effective sales
tools, it can be a major challenge to attract search engine
referrals to a mini-site.

Conventional wisdom says that you have to buy your traffic
through e-zine advertising, pay-per-click, and affiliate program
commissions... but that's not the whole story. A high percentage
of the sales of my new book have been from direct search engine
referrals.

In fact, you can optimize a mini-site for search engines,
although it may require some real HTML coding skills to get the
job done.

In general, mini-sites lack the three things that search engines
value the most: keywords, content, and linkage.

The Keyword Challenge
Because a mini-site is a sales letter, the choice of wording in
headlines, and throughout the site, is dictated by the site's
primary purpose - it's supposed to close the sale. Somehow, a
balance has to be struck between effective selling copy and
keyword placement. In a moment, I'll explain how this can be
done.

The Content Gap
Most top-ranking sites carry significant content, optimized for
a group of thematically related keywords. The structure of the
site itself contributes to the overall search engine rankings
and traffic, by reinforcing the theme. A mini-site is only one
page, with a sales message. Don't worry, there are several ways
to bridge this gap.

The Missing Links
Unfortunately, a "links" section sort of defeats the purpose of
a mini-site, which is designed to keep the visitor in one place
until they've made their decision. So, link swaps are out of the
question. Even affiliate programs usually don't help with link
popularity because of the way affiliate links work. This, too,
can be overcome.

WARNING: This is a bit more complex than the usual e-zine
fare... you may have to read it twice to fully understand it.

Step One: Optimizing For Keywords
The first obstacle is the opening headline - you need it to be
effective and attention-getting. The solution? If you can't
change your headline, use an image instead of a regular H1 tag!
With GIF or PNG compression, you should be able to bring even
the biggest headline in at less than 1K - you can also use your
keywords in the image's ALT property.

If you use an image for the headline, you'll want to use
Javascript to make sure your headline image preloads before the
rest of the page - if you don't, you'll lose sales... and don't
try this at all if your hosting provider isn't up to snuff - the
headline should load within 1 second on a typical 56K dialup
connection.

Beyond the opening headline, it's easier to work keywords into
your sub-headlines and copy. If necessary, use a style sheet
(CSS) to reduce the font size of your heading tags - your
subheadlines should be H1 and/or H2, and be as keyword-focused
as possible. Pick at most 5-7 keywords and work them into your
copy - ideally each keyword will appear 3-5 times, somewhere on
the page. Work as many in as you can, as early as you can.

Finally, pick the most important keywords, and use them for your
page title if you can - it may look a little goofy, but if your
headline does its job nobody's reading the title bar anyway.
Without keywords in your page title, your search engine rankings
will suffer.

Step Two: Solving The Content Conundrum
Content doesn't necessarily improve your ranking for a single
search term, but it does broaden the scope of your search engine
positioning. Creating a single page of content for each of the
5-7 keywords you selected will definitely reinforce your site's
theme... but how can you put all that content onto a 1-page
site?

For starters, you can think about using informational pop-ups.
When a visitor clicks on one of your keywords, your content page
can open up in a new window. The HTML tag for this is: A
HREF="contentpage.html" target="_blank" - don't use a Javascript
pop-up, because search engines can't index that. Use Javascript
in the content page itself to resize the window as soon as it
begins loading - that way, your visitor sees a little pop-up
window and the search engine sees the content.

Of course, you might not even want that much linking and
clicking. In this case, you can use your stylesheet to give
hyperlinks the same color as the rest of your text, effectively
hiding them. To hide them further, you can put the hyperlink
tags around the period at the end of a sentence, or the space
between two words.

Now, here's another way to kill two birds with one stone... my
two-site two-step!

Step Three: Link Popularity
The traditional link swap is two websites pointing to each
other... but there's no law that says you have to do it that
way. The ideal way to create link popularity for your mini-site
is to create a "partner" site, under another domain name, that
carries content related to your keywords. You link to your
mini-site from every page, and you now have a way to swap links.

Here's how it works: you ask the other website owner to link to
your mini-site, in return for which you provide a link back via
your "partner" site. Usually, they'd rather have a link from
your partner site anyway, since it has more content on it.

I go even further when I can with a "content swap," where each
site owner provides an article for the other site. Your article
carries links to both your mini-site and your "partner" site.
You then set up a link on your "partner" site pointing to this
article. Because the article will have links to it from both
sites, it's almost certain to be found and indexed by the search
engines.

Nobody Said This Was Easy!
When it comes to search engine positioning, a mini-site presents
a lot of challenges. Everyone wants their home page to rank 1st
for all kinds of keywords, but in the new era of theme-based
search engines, that's easier said than done... especially if
your "website" consists of a single page. I hope this article
inspires you to make your own mini-site an exception to the
rule.

I wish you success...

About the Author

Dan Thies has been helping his clients (and friends) promote
their websites since 1996.
His latest book, "Search Engine Fast Start," is available at
http://www.cannedbooks.com

Click Here to Learn The Exact Same Minisite Secret That Allows Me To Cash HUGE Checks Every Week And Live The Life I Want While Everyone Else Has To Keep Struggling To Make Money.

How To Build A Minisite Empire

Build an Empire?

When you're deciding to become a website publisher you will fall into one of two broad categories:

. Publish 100 websites that each earn $1 a day profit
. Publish 1 website that earns $100 a day profit

The reality of it is, most people end up somewhere in between. Having 100 websites leaves you with maintenance, management and content issues. Having one website leaves you open to all sort of fluctuations (search engines algorithm's, market trends, etc). You can adapt your plan on the way, but you'll have an easier time if you start out going in the direction of where you want to end up.

General or Niche

You can build your website around general topics or niche ones. Generally speaking niche websites work better with AdSense. First off the ad targeting is much better. Secondly as you have a narrow focus your writing naturally becomes more expert in nature. Hopefully this makes you more of an authority in your field.

If this is your first try at building an AdSense website, make it about something you enjoy. It will make the process much easier and less painful to accomplish. You should however make sure that your topic has enough of an ad inventory and the payout is at a level you are comfortable with. You may love medieval folk dancing, but the pool of advertisers for that subject is very small (in fact it's currently zero).

Once you've gotten the hang of how AdSense works on a website, you are going to want to dabble in some high paying keywords, you may even be tempted to buy a high paying keyword list. This does come with some dangers. First off the level of fraud is much higher on the big money terms. Secondly there is a distortion of the supply and demand relationship for these terms. Everyone wants ads on their website that make $35 or more a click, however the number of advertisers who are willing to pay that much is pretty limited. Additionally the competition for that traffic is going to be stiff. So, don't try to run with the big dogs if you can't keep up. If you have to ask if you're a big dog, then chances are, you're not.

New Sites, Files and Maintenance

When you're building a new site don't put AdSense on it until it's finished. In fact I'd go even farther and say don't put AdSense on it until you have built inbound links and started getting traffic. If you put up a website with 'lorem ipsum' dummy or placeholder text, your AdSense ads will almost certainly be off topic. This is often true for new files on existing websites, especially if the topic is new or different. It may take days or weeks for google's media bot to come back to your page and get the ads properly targeted.

I like to build my sites using include statements which pull in other files. I put the header, footer and navigation in common files as well as my AdSense code. It makes it much easier to maintain and manage. If I want/need to change my AdSense code, it's only one file I have to work with.

The themes I used to build the minute minisite product are all completely optimized for high click through and great AdSense income, so you don't need to worry about this for the product you have in your hands now.

Manage your Channels and URL's

AdSense channels is one area where it's really easy to go overboard with stats. You can set up URL channels to compare how one website is doing to another. You can also set up sub channels for each URL. If you wanted to you do something channels like this:

. domain1.com  728 banner
. domain1.com  336 block
. domain1.com  text link
. domain2.com  728 banner
. domain2.com  image banner
. domain2.com  336 block
. domain3.com  300 block

While this is great for testing and knowing who clicks where and why, it makes your reporting a little wonky. Your total number will always be correct but when you look at your reports with a channel break down things will get displayed multiple times and not add up to correct total. Makes things pretty confusing, so decide if you really need/want that level of reporting detail.

At the very least you want to know what URL is generating the income so be sure to enter distinct URL channels.

AdSense in RSS

With the growth of blogs and RSS feeds you're starting to see AdSense included in the feeds now. This doesn't work very well (at least it hasn't for me) and here's why:

. You only get to place one ad unit.
. You have no control over finding the 'sweet spot' for the ad unit.
. The ads are usually poorly targeted (this is getting better).
. People develop 'banner blindness'.

I know people like being able to read full postings in their feed reader, and there are at least a dozen other reasons for full posts from pleasing your users to mobile offline computing, all of which are completely valid. However if your website depends on generating AdSense revenue to survive, then bring them to the site and show them the ads there.

Affiliate Sites

Placing AdSense on affiliate sites is tricky. Are you giving up a $10, $20, or $30 sale for a $1 click? This is something you have to test on your own to figure out. If you aren't converting now it's definitely worth a try. I like to use AdSense on my article pages. For example let's say you had an affiliate website where you sold shoes. You're going to need some related articles to 'flesh out' the site. Things like 'getting a shoe shine' or 'finding a shoe repair shop' these are excellent spots for AdSense. While you won't get rich, they will usually provide a small steady income and cover things like hosting costs.

If you find you have pages getting more than 50 clicks per month add more pages about this topic, and link the pages together. Mine your logs for the search terms used and create content around those keywords.

PPC Arbitrage

This is a dicey subject so I'm going to steer clear of precise examples. Basically you bid on low volume uber niche terms at a very low cost. You set up landing page that contains high payout ads for the related general topic. You are looking for terms with a large gap between the price you are bidding on adwords and the price you are getting on AdSense. If you pay $0.10 a click and get $1.00 a click you make $0.90 each click. To get your AdSense ad approved you will need to 'add some value' along the way. You can make a killing or get taken to the cleaners with this one, so make sure you know what you are doing before you try it.

728 leaderboard works very well if it is just above the end of the 'above the fold' area on what would be considered your viewers average resolution/browser window size if there are few other enticing links above the fold. Makes for an interesting layout but if you're building a site for AdSense it may be worth it. I consistently receive very high CTRs from doing this.

Try to build sites that allow you to quickly try any and all of those locations outlined in the heatmap guide or at least allow you a wide degree of freedom to easily change ad/content locations.

In doing the research for this manuscript, two common ideas kept getting repeated:

. My AdSense ads are horrible, they only pay out (insert low dollar figure here)
. My AdSense CTR is horrible, I only get a (insert extremely low CTR here)

To be fair these comments weren't coming just from bloggers, but bloggers did make up an overwhelmingly large percentage. I think this stems from a misconception on the part of the bloggers that they are entitled to high payout and CTR.

I'd like to spend a little time to share my feelings on this subject. In the early days a blog may just have been an online diary or journal, but like the days of the Nehru jackets, they are gone.

What a blog is now is Chronologically Structured Content Management System, as opposed to the classic web hierarchical structured implementation. Let's be clear, you can still use a blog as your online diary or journal, but nowdays it's just as likely to be used as a commercial blog.

Yes, I did just say commercial blog, and no the earth didn't open under my feet and swallow me whole for saying it. Let's take some time to look at a your typical blog.

You may post about commercial related subjects like your job, what you like to buy, or even your hobbies. However these posts are all about your life, they are no more commercially viable or attractive than those damn holiday 'newsletters' we get from annoying cousins and long lost family friends (they stopped being our friends because of those damn newsletters!). You know what I'm talking about too- the friend who every year sends out a finely crafted newsletter in a coordinating envelope ordered from paperdirect.com telling us all about how Johnny is finally potty trained (at 18) and little Suzie made honor roll again. We learn how hard her husband works, how many activities her kids are in and how good they are at them. We also read the details of how her rubber stamping business hasn't taken off yet, but she promises to spend more time on it right after New Years.

So if you were a business owner would you want to advertise anywhere in those Newsletters? No! Then why would a business want to pay you top dollar to advertise on your blog? What's that, you say your blog gets (insert a high number here) of readers per day, surely that has to be worth something?

Well did you know that your friend sends out over 800 copies of that holiday newsletter to 17 countries, on 4 continents? Now before you get all fired up about it, understand that I don't have a problem with you having a personal blog or sharing it with the public. However your expectation that it has value outside of your family/friends/community, is a serious misconception.

So what exactly is a commercially viable blog?

Don't think of it as publishing a blog, think of it as publishing an online magazine. You need to start out with good content or articles about a small area or niche topic. You will need lots of content, and unless you are well known, don't expect much to happen until you've written at least 100 and more likely over 200 articles.

Yes you will have to devote some time and effort to publicizing and marketing it as well. Once you've got a significant focused reader base, that's the time to slowly ad in the advertising. Now here's the one that causes lots of people to freak out. BE PREPARED TO GIVE UP SOME PRIME SCREEN REAL ESTATE, IN THE CENTER, ABOVE THE FOLD, TO ADVERTISING.

If you've worked with print media at all you will know the middle of the right hand page is the most desirable spot inside of a magazine (excluding the cover pages). I've sat through meetings where people have said " you know we need more right hand pages ".

If you want people to click on your ads, you will need put them where they can see them, above the fold in the center of the screen, in a prominent location. Yes I can almost hear the keys typing for the flame comments and emails now. Before you hit that send button though, ask yourself this, are you building a space sought after by advertisers, or are you working on your holiday Newsletter?

No I don't think your pages should be filled with ads, in fact quite the opposite, there should always be more content than advertising, ALWAYS!

Next thing, lose the fancy graphics and eye-candy from your template. I know you may have paid for a fancy template, maybe you had your niece who's a graphic artist design something for you, or you really like the way that spinning flaming platypus looks in your page header.

Here's the thing- it's detracting from your content, your CTR and ultimately your INCOME. Graphics should be simple, understated, and support the content, not overpower or compete with it. Now before some art student wearing a beret, corduroy jacket with elbow patches, and smoking a French cigarette, writes and calls me a Philistine, stop and think.

Are you designing a commercially attractive and viable space, or are you designing an intricate macrame border for your Newsletter? Remember keep it simple and to the point.

Ugly can be cool- and profitable.

Yes I know you feel like I just ripped off the band-aid, and now it hurts. Sorry but someone had to do it. You may be thinking 'but can't I still have this - do we have to get rid of this - I really like that -'. Well I'm not your second grade teacher who's going to tell you everything's all right, that you don't have to change a thing, and put a scooby-doo sticker on your shirt to make you feel better. If you want a blog that makes you more money than you spend at Starbucks every Tuesday, you will need to get serious about what you're doing.

If none of this sounds incredibly fun, and really sounds pretty close to actual work, here's the way I see it, getting an AdSense check for $5 is fun, getting an AdSense check for $500 or $5000 is work.

Start Cranking Out Your Own Profit-Pumping Minisites Using Mini Site Marketingand mini site software - even if you dont know any of that Techie Stuff!