Authority sites vs Mini sites

It mainly depends on kind of keywords you want to rank for, if you are just planning to rank for 1 or 2 keywords, them minisite would be better.

Big/authority sites will be the new WSO,s.

Watch this space over the coming months, micro sites will take a nosedive.

Remember this though, everything you learnt about micro sites can be applied to big authority sites with a few tweaks.

Dont waste your money chasing crap WSo,s ... use your head and take what you already know and adapt it!

Common sense prevails.

I have some mini sites and I have some bigger sites. To be honest I am starting to take a very negative view toward mini sites, although not necessarily from an Internet Marketers point of view.

When I am searching for information on the internet and all I can find is a heap of mini-sites that are created for the obvious reason of making money and that's all, it really annoys me. The content is usually crap and often doesn't give you the answer your looking for - or at least not the right answer.

So from a moral perspective, I'm really beginning to think that mini sites are wrong. People are looking for answers and information, they don't want to be fed lies and crap just because others are trying to make money from it. And this is what I look at now when I'm considering creating a new site. Do I want to offer visitors crap just so I can make money, or do I want to offer visitors good quality information so that they can be satisfied with what they find and so that I can be successful longer term.

Mini sites will come and go, authority sites will tend to hang around much longer, even though they do require a lot more work and patience, I think they have the better long term income success.

You can still rank for your long term keyword phrase, just have a page for that phrase and build backlinks to that page. You can do that for multiple keyword phrases and have your site ranking for all of them. That surely will bring a better income than one small site ranking for one keyword phrase.

You might want to try a mini authority site, which is something I've been successful with many times over. Basically a small site that is exhaustive on the niche instead of a two or three page site. The keywords drive traffic and the traffic drives revenue.

If you can manage Mini Sites easily then it's the way to go.

Go with the authority site...for the mini sites, it may make sense if you want to target different countries...then having hosting in that country will help your rankings for the local search....

There are pros and cons to both. Also, there's nothing wrong with doing both. However, if you have a hard time focusing then I'd say go for one big site. Sometimes it's easier to put all of your efforts into one project at a time. Especially when it's time to build backlinks!

I've never managed to make any great income off mini sites to be honest. Most of my revenue have always come from authority sites, so now a days I'd rather focus on 3 main projects through the year rather than 30 mini sites.

Way back I used mini sites to drive traffic to my bigger sites. Eventually I just concentrated on larger sites. Once an authority site gets up to size it is very easy to maintain and make lots of money from but it takes time to build large authority sites.

Another thing I like about the bigger sites is this.

You can get people to a page on your site selling whatever but because you are much larger you have many more pages you can sell them something, so for 1 search you gave them many sales pages, a micro site can't do that. Its like leveraging your efforts and getting maximum exposure for all your work in getting them to the site anyway.

Not to mention, any other pages built will become much easier to rank for once you already have a sufficient number of links built.

I,ve got pages ranking on page 2 with absolutely no backlinking that would have cost a fair amount of time and effort if I,d just created a brand new site to target those products. All it will take now to get those pages on page 1 is a quick profile blast.

It becomes much easier once the site starts to grow to rank everything else.

Some more thoughts on this:
1) Micro-managing dozens to hundreds of minisites can be a hassle. Having only a few but bigger sites is easier to overlook and manage.

2) You'll gain instant credibility with your audience if your website is big. This makes it easier to be seen as an authority what helps in marketing (tell your visitors how big your site is).

3) One of the most common issues coming up on this board is "my site does not rank" or "I put up a post on my blog and doesn't get not indexed". If you have an authority site on a narrow enough subject (long tail) all your posts on this subject will rank automatically on the first page, if not on the top spot. And they are indexed within seconds.

4) After you've established yourself for a keyword, it is very easy to rank for synonyms, so you can branch out over time to new areas without having to build a new site, get it indexed and get it ranked

As always, the initial effort has to be overcome but the long-term rewards are higher. And that's why so few build authority sites- most on this board are into the "make money quick" mindset. On the other hand, this makes it easy for you to separate yourself from the crowd.

Congrats to latrice17 for your decision.

I would say both are good, but you should weigh up the pros and cons to decide for yourself.

how many pages constitutes a mini-site and vice versa?

What if the subject isn't broad enough to go beyond 5-10 pages, but the 5-10 pages that are written is the best content available for that subject, helping the user immensely.

Take the best organic cat foods dot com.

First your listing only the best organic cat foods, and second I doubt there is more than 5-10 best organic cat foods, as the best are usually boiled down to top 5-10.

Would this site still be considered an authoritive site even if it has a similar page number to your usual mini sites?

I think page numbers should not count towards the title "an authoritive site" but rather its influence on its community, and its value i.e does the content really solve the problem at hand, and if so could this content be made any better.

Obviously, if a person was to the selectively pick one of the organic cat foods, and make a website about it, then that would be a mini site right?

But then that statement could also be wrong, as the best organic cat foods dot come site could give overal information about these cat foods, comparing them etc.

But then the more specific organic cat food sub-directory could go into more detail and be an authority on all things "said organic cat food", detailing its properties, what it mixes well with, where it was made, who made it and so forth.

It too could be an authoritive site, this is all down to what the owners end goal is i.e if the owners goal is to make abit of money, only slightly explain things or cut corners then yes I would class it a small mini site used for ones monetary gains, whilst if the goal is to instruct or inform the user of all things "said subject/object etc" then that site will cover all angles thus being an authority in its subject (provided the content is actually useful)

my .02 cents.