What Size Website Should Your Start-Up Business Build?

If you or you company are in the development stages of a start-up online business venture, you are probably overwhelmed by the number of decisions that have to be make. One you should not fail to consider in your planning has to do with website size. Should you build a small website, a mini-site in the beginning, with the plan of building a portfolio of such sites? Should you, alternatively, build the structure for a large website, although you would allow it to grow slowly?

Before I get into the advantages of each side of this dilemma, I should let you know what this decision does not impact. The question is not necessarily related to how large your business will ultimately become. Businesses that run a number of small sites can grow as well as those that concentrate on one major huge 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.”

Positive cash flow can be established sooner with the small site approach. Part of this is due to the larger site having to invest resources in chasing the higher level keywords, which the mini-site is likely to ignore. 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.

I’ll point to three practical ramifications of how you decide to approach this business decision.

The first has to do with start up cost. When you plan to build a large site, the architecture of the whole site (as it will eventually become) must be in place. Thus, it is more expensive to begin such a site, even though you may start nearly as small as the mini-site business. Laying the foundation for silo sites is inherently costlier than the smaller, less expensive mini-site.

A second practical difference pertains to your approach to keywords. The keyword research for a mini-site will be much more tightly focused upon the long-tail terms, especially those that show commercial intent (thus more likely to convert sooner rather than later). 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.

The last practical ramification has to do with page rank. The number of pages in a site is one of the variables that is part of the page rank algorithm, assuming the internal linking structure of the site is well optimized. Consequently, it is easier for a large site to achieve a high page rank than for a small site, although you must remember that other variables are even more important in maximizing the total page rank.

I trust that I have given you some things to think about and apply to your unique business situation, despite the fact that I have not provided any clear cut final decision with respect to which alternative is the best option for you.

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