Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I am new to posting here, but I am not new to web dev - have been self-employed for 7 years. Forgive me in advance if this question has been explicitly answered in the past. I did do a search and didn't find a many answers though, aside from a general trend to favour larger sites.
I have over the years made a few small sites for purely informational purposes (how-to sites less than 30 pages in size). They share the same theme (how to make certain kinds of food) and are self-contained. All have some page rank but I have never promoted them. They pull some modest traffic. It recently dawned on me to put Adsense on them, and hence the nature of this question.
Is it "better" to have several small sites that are easier to rank and are niche targetted or create a larger site that has better potentials for content growth?
Right now, it would be challenging for me to expand my small sites and put new content on them because their focus is narrow (for example, how many ways can you cook food XYZ?) I could of course expand them a bit but there's only so far one can go.
A large site offers better content growth potential but may be harder to rank. And I'd be starting from scratch. (hehe I just re-read that, no pun intended)!
So, may I ask your opinions? Large vs. small - what are the pluses and minuses of either strategy that I have missed?
Thanks,
Desi
Where it might help to to have a bigger site is that you will have more internal links back to your homepage which helps PR and affects how well you do in search engine results.
Better yet get more links to your sites from other sites on the same topic. The more visitors you have the better you will do and inbound links help.
If your small sites already have some good inbound links you may not want to move that info to another domain.
I love having one of my homepages ranking 5th on a general one word key word like "widgeting" as it gives my ego a boost. But in truth far more people come through dozens of two to three word phrases on specific topics within my niche. In other words even if you could rank well on "do it yourself" you will do better from specific searches like "widget recipies".
There is no reason to not try out adsense and see how it does. You can always make adjustments later.
Something that always helps AdSense performance is optimizing your site right from the start. When you decide to put the AdSense code on your pages, check out:
[google.com...]
The AdSense heat map is particularly useful. I also recommend the information about using custom channels. Custom channels can help you see which ad formats, locations, and color schemes perform well so that you can apply these lessons throughout your site and experiment until you find the most effective implementation methods.
Another feature you should try out right away are link units, which are popular with many publishers. More information can be found at:
[google.com...]
Good luck!
ASA
Actually, if I were to start over, I'd probably go for the smaller sites. A large site brings with it design and content issues that having a bunch of smaller sites instead would illiminate.
I suspect that one of the benefits of a single site is more internal linking options. Another benefit is name recognition, the bigger the site, the bigger the potential pool (maybe) of folks telling their friends that the place to find everything they need to know about (whatever) can be found at example.com.
I guess these things are always a trade off to some degree. Each style has it's own pluses and minuses.
With very little effort and no need to change my site design, I started making what I felt was good money.
My advice is do some reading at Google, as ASA suggested, and some browsing here. Settle on an initial approach, put up the ads, and start learning while you earn. Or earning while you learn.
My experience for my niches are that the small niche sites of 20-40 pages have a much, much higher CTR (20-25%) and eCPM (USD 40-90) than the 1,000+ page niche portals (4-5% and USD 10). Bear in mind that these are the same niche subject.
This seems to be the general consensus of opinion from most who have posted here.
If I could translate the small niche earnings to the large portals, boy would I be happy:-)
These days I tend to concentrate more on the smaller sites than the larger ones and, apart from the obvious higher ROI, the fact is that if one has more sites spread around one's niche, then if one of those sites is obliterated through a Google/Yahoo!/MSN algo change, then the probability is that one of the other sites will be promoted!
It is unlikely with Google that an authority site would be removed like this however I can assure you that the same sites in Y!/MSN bounce around all over the place with the strangest of results beating my brains out sometimes.
One large niche site removed from any SERPs is not conducive to one being a happy bunny...
My experience for my niches are that the small niche sites of 20-40 pages have a much, much higher CTR (20-25%) and eCPM (USD 40-90) than the 1,000+ page niche portals (4-5% and USD 10). Bear in mind that these are the same niche subject. This seems to be the general consensus of opinion from most who have posted here.
I have seen an even more interesting effect, where the very small sites enjoy significatly better overall numbers and CTR, (comparatively speaking) in the same niche subject areas.
i.e. Many small 1 or 2 page sites do better than 5 page websites, a 4 page site has better numbers than an 8 pager, a 10 page site does better than 20-40 page sites, etc.
This is why I always wonder why so many here always say "content is king" (and if it's really correct) in that the more content you have it seems the results (in particular CTR, often ECPM too, and sometimes EPC) almost always decline! Anyone here know why this appears to happen so much?
For those of you with smaller sites, how often do you add new content? As I mentioned above, there's only so far some of my little sites could be expanded and stay on topic. If I keep them ranking well (increasing inbound links etc.) do I even need to be as concerned about new content all the time?
Thanks,
Desi
For those of you with smaller sites, how often do you add new content?
As little as possible! Using includes it's easy enough to update any page however once the relevant internal pages have been completed, unless a whole new load of information were to suddenly appear which is very unlikely, then I do not touch them.
do I even need to be as concerned about new content all the time?
Not if it's relevant, authoritative and optimised correctly...and that's up to the algo IMHO!
In reality the portals change very little either apart from adding a few new pages each month and changing the index page each weekend.
ember - I totally concur.
trader - I've never tried a site with so few pages therefore I cannot comment however I may just have a go with one of my very specific niche products.
how often do you add new content?
My smallest site is also my biggest AS income generator. It has less than 100 pages and I add a new article about twice a week, on average. I'm a firm believer that you should focus most of your time on two activities that directly affect your income: gathering links and putting up new content. There may be a better way, but this is what I try to spend 80%+ of my time on and it works. I've gone from $0 to over $3000 every month in about 18 months with this approach. Not "get rich quick," but steady increases. Good luck!
