Single Domain Development vs. Multiple Micro-site Development Strategies
A couple of weeks ago (I was on vacation last week or would have written about this earlier), I met a friend for coffee to talk about domains and SEO. Yes, I actually schedule coffee get together for the sole purpose of talking about this. And I LIKE it!
Anyway, I met Chris Brooks at the Cambridge SEO MeetUp and he and I had talked briefly about this. I think he was intrigued about my monetization strategy for all of my domains. These are small, niche-specific domains that MIGHT recoup their registration fees by parking alone. In truth, most don’t even make that much. All of these domains have been ‘tasted’ multiple times but set free because they require development to be profitable.
Chris’ take on it (and a very intelligent take, at that) is that it would be very difficult to adequately develop on that scale while my perspective is that these domains would be able to rank highly on search with minimal effort as they are very specific. These domains may not be able to pull their weight by direct navigation, however I view direct navigation traffic as merely a hint at the potential traffic that awaits if you can rank for that term. Direct navigation to unknown or previously unvisited domains (not well-known destinations such as ESPN.com) is so tiny compared to the use of search engines that you can safely assume that it’s 15-20x the volume you might see from parking. Do I have evidence to back that claim? No, but doesn’t it make sense? And that multiple grows the more niche the term or phrase.
Well, I think the answer is a little bit of both. I quickly threw up a bad WordPress template for one of my domains, LasVegasTempAgencies.com, as a test. It ranked #2 for the term “Las Vegas Temp Agencies” (with the quotes) within 4 hours on Google. Granted, it requires the quotes. But it’s got no content! So I think my theory holds true. But so does Chris’ as I still haven’t developed those domains and they’re just sitting and either treading water or slowly drowning waiting for me to get off my butt.
So, what’s the cost? $.03/day for the domain, $.01/day for the hosting (I use a HTTPMe package for hosting). If you’re domain has any pulse at all over a week from parking, you can beat $.04/day. As I pointed out in another post about traffic valuation the average value per unique visitor across Frank Schilling’s network and the average value per unique visitor that helped create Shoemoney’s infamous $132k AdSense check was about $.06.
But Chris’ point is that it take scale to feel the impact with that strategy and he prefers to focus his energy on bigger sites like his septic system site (which I think is great).
I think the big difference is that my strategy relies more on the power of the domain to attain high natural rankings for a specific term while he builds sub-pages to rank for multiple terms. The advantage he has is not carrying the reg fee for 800 domains.
I think as you can guess, there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer here. We didn’t reach one over that cup of coffee. It just goes to show that there are multiple ways to skin the cat. There are other reasons I prefer the multi-domain strategy which I will write about soon. I’ll give you a hint: I don’t worship at the church of Google.
