A few minisite questions..

Andysp68 · Jun 30, 2008

I (like a myriad of others I guess) am thinking about setting up a few minisites for a couple of domains I have sitting around doing nothing.

I would appreciate it if somone can answer a few questions I have.

1. Would there be much difference to a minisite having 1 page only or say 3 or 4 pages?

2. If you have just the one page with adsense on it does google know its a minisite and punish you for this ie delist you?

3. Would using all the adsense allocation on the 1 page ( 3 main ads, 3 link ads and a google search ) effect how google views you?

4. Can you use the exact same site layout for all the minisites you have or does google see this as duplication?

Thanks

Andy

yesterday · Jul 4, 2008

1. Would there be much difference to a minisite having 1 page only or say 3 or 4 pages?

The more unique copy the better.
You can target more keywords with more pages.
Probably better to split really long copy onto different pages so the keyword isn't diluted too much and have the other pages linking back to the main one to give it strength.

2. If you have just the one page with adsense on it does google know its a minisite and punish you for this ie delist you?

Not usually, though they have the algorithm to do that because they punish you for ppc landing pages if that's what you have.
Have a look at the formidable Kieron at UKoffers' post about creating good landing pages. (albeit a year old.)
how to create landing pages

So, technically they can, but I don't think they do.

3. Would using all the adsense allocation on the 1 page ( 3 main ads, 3 link ads and a google search ) effect how google views you?
No I don't think so.

4. Can you use the exact same site layout for all the minisites you have or does google see this as duplication?
This is a great question that I can't answer fully.
I'd like to think that google judges a site on its original content merit rather than its design, else all wordpress blogs etc would be punished for being on the same platform. Judging by the success of blogs I think if anything it helps because the bot knows how to crawl the page effectively.

So I'd guess the answer is that you can safely duplicate design and layout.

But just to add a drowning fly into the smelly ointment googles adwords advice says "You should have unique content (should not be similar or nearly identical in appearance to another site)".

yesterday

ScottJ · Jul 4, 2008

Pretty much agree with Yesterday

1.There have been suggestions Google likes to see contact/about us pages however I have a few one page sites that rank no.1 so {shrug}

2. No

3. No

4. Yes as long as the text is different you can use the same template