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If you or you company are in the development stages of a beginning online business venture, you are probably amazed at the number of decisions that you must reach.  One you should not fail to consider in your business plan relates to 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, instead, build the structure 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, itself, will ultimately become.  Businesses that operate a number of tiny sites can grow as well as those that concentrate on one major “money site.”  It also is not necessarily impacted your target niche.  The planned size of a website in the beginning can lead to ultimate growth and financial success of the business as a whole. 

In other words, the answer to the question is not automatic, and I’ll warn you right now that I’m not going to recommend the “one magical size fits all” approach.

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 two approaches call for different models of long term growth, although both may begin largely concentrating upon a relatively narrow slice of the market.  Businesses that begin with a large site as the eventual goal, with fully develop one small sub-niche, then gradually add new sections dedicated to other sub-niches onto their original site.  Those who initially built a small site, with intention of always leaving it small, will take a “duplication of success” approach, as they gradually add more an more individual sites to their virtual empire of tiny websites.  So, as the big sites grow ever larger with more and more categories, departments or silos, the business with mini-sites might create twenty or fifty or a hundred individual “storefronts.”

As a general rule, the mini-sites can establish positive cash flow more quickly.  This is partly due to such a business not investing resources into those most competitive, high level keywords.  In the long run however, over the course of many months or even years, the mega-sites can become competitive for the high traffic keywords and might even become recognized as an authority in the broadly based market.

Let me move now to some of the important practical matters that are impacted by your decision on this important matter.

One of these pertains to the amount that needs to be invested into the site itself in the beginning.  Although you’re still beginning relatively small with the site that you plan to become large, the foundation for a larger site must be laid.  That means that the site’s eventual architecture must be created and the systems put in place that will eventuall become necessary for operation.  Consequently, although the mini-site and the eventual mega-site may be the same size at launch, the model for the larger site costs more at start-up.  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.  Your keyword research for a smaller 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  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).  Thus, it is more difficult to achieve a high page rank than it is for a large site because of its inherent value on that variable.

So I hope I have given you some food for thought, even though I haven’t provided a clear cut answer to you.  Perhaps, though, these considerations give you an inclination as to what you ought to do given your own unique business circumstances.

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