Previously I have looked at the all the variables that go into deciding the best size for your business website.  Should it be a large, authority site or a highly targeted small website (a mini-site)?

Now I’ll look at how you begin after your decision that building a mini-site is best for you.  I especially want to concentrate on your preliminary work, before you start designing that first page.

Even before you buy your domain name, you need to completely research the the niche thatyou have chosen and its keywords and key phrases.  To be successful with a mini-site, you must focus on a few relatively low traffic keywords, especially long-tail key phrases.  Furthermore, you must make sure that those keywords are very closely related semantically.

Providing my definition of some of the most important terms in that last paragraph will help me clarify.  Niche research involves doing keyword research and competition research.  Keyword research is discovering what words and phrases your prospective customers are likely to use when they are searching for information, products or services similar to what your business offers.  Keywords are said to have long tails when the phrase entered into a search engine has multiple words.  For example, “television” might be a keyword for your niche.  “Panasonic high definition television” has a longer tail.  “Buy Panasonic high definition 46 inch television in Omaha” is a very long tailed keyword.  Notice that the last of those sample phrases also signals an interest in conducting a transaction; it has what is often referred to as “commercial intent.” 

Competition research can be broken into two parts.  On the one hand you will gather information about what your top competitors are doing by visiting those sites in the top twenty results of a seach for each of the words and phrases you have selected for your website.  You want to learn what keywords they are using, how many external links are directed toward that landing page and, while you’re there, a bit about their marketing strategy.  The other side of competition research is to determine how valuable your selected key phrases are by determining the level of competition for them.  A quick way to gather that information is to see how many sponsored ads appear on google for each of the keywords that you plan to use.  If lots of businesses are willing to spend money to attract traffic that has used those keywords, that is a strong indicator that it is a good keyword.  Don’t panic if you find a high number of ads; competition is good in this instance.  You probably wouldn’t make any money promoting a keyword that nobody else is interested in.

Finally, I mentioned that the long-tail key phrases that you select for your single mini-site should be closely related semantically.  Using our example, if we take the example of the last key phrase I made up, we could simply substitute other cities and those different key phrases would still be substantially the same.  On the other hand, we might also want to change the screen size option to other large televisions that Panasonic actually offers (perhaps, “36,” “42″ or “54″)  Or we might want to substitute other words that signal commercial intent, such as “purchase,” “deliver,” “delivery,” “best price for,” and others.

It is not possible to over emphasize the essential nature of this preliminary research.  Some businesses choose to not not buy the necessary software and hire professionals for the keyword research.  Some will also outsource the competition research.  That part is up to you, of course.  After all, it is your business, you know!