If you’re going to build websites for commercial purposes, it’s helpful to understand the basic differences between authority sites and mini sites. Many internet marketing newbies have trouble deciding which kind of site to focus on.
What it really comes down to, however, is your own personality and your long term goals for your business. Authority sites and mini sites both have certain features to recommend them, and we’ll be looking at some of these below.
Each type of website, authority and mini, give you a range of options unique to each one. Mini sites would enable you to market one specific product, but not a large variety in this niche. Depending on your market, and the number of products you want to sell, you have to decide which model is more appropriate. You can explore this decision from different angles. It is possible to have ten mini sites along with one rather large authority site. Then let’s think about getting traffic to each situation. You’ll have to duplicate your efforts for getting traffic for each one of the ten mini sites. Your authority site will also require traffic driving efforts on your part. The difference is that you can deliver traffic to one page within the same site with authority sites. So what you have with the authority site, which is larger of course, is the element of time leveraging. Smaller mini sites have limited content and are almost impossible to make “sticky.
You will no doubt have far more avenues for monetizing an authority site than with a mini site. Depending on your market and search terms, you can benefit from the high volume of traffic you get each day. You will find that other considerations about your market and traffic will determine how well you can monetize your site. On the other hand, selling ad space is not the only way to make money.
Mini site and authority sites, then, each have their advantages and disadvantages. While this makes a certain sense, we would not advise you to plan your entire marketing strategy solely on the basis of Google’s policies.