How ‘Mini-Funnel’ Websites Can Help You Increase Traffic, Generate Leads and Build Exposure
Search engines are an excellent source of high quality web traffic. They don’t send visitors who ’stumble upon’ your website or accidently clicked on an ad banner. Instead, they send you interested visitors who type in a query while fully expecting to find what they need. They are engaged right from the start and ready to buy, browse or read.
If their desire is well fulfilled by your webpage, you may end up getting a bookmark, customer or repeat reader. Added bonus: search engine traffic is consistent and usually cost-free. Ranking well for several relevant keywords or phrases could get you a steady stream of visitors everyday. That’s why some businesses choose to hire SEO firms/consultants.
There are many factors involved in the actual ranking of a site on a search engine results page, one of them being the use of keywords in the domain name. While the use of a keyword or key phrase does not alone promise a high ranking, it does seem to be a factor to some extent, partially because the domain name is often used as the anchor text for links.
Why do I talk about this? Because one way to get more search engine traffic is to build many of what I call ‘mini-funnel’ websites for specific keyword phrase/search queries. All of these slave websites could be designed as pointers to funnel traffic to your master site. Alternatively, they could be used as a stand-alone site to build exposure/accumulate leads.
Let’s do an example. I recently came across ’Is Barack Obama a Muslim‘ a one-page website created by someone to answer that one specific search query. The domain name and title tag consists of the keyword phrase (isbarackobamaamuslim) and the word ‘No’ links to the U.S democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama’s campaign website. Screenshot:
Just in case the user misspells his/her query there’s also ‘Is Barack Obama Muslin‘, a one-page website created specifically for possible incorrect search terms (the usefulness of this is offset by search engine auto-correction). In any case, this page contains 3 links, one to the Wikipedia page for ‘Muslin’, one to Obama’s campaign site and the other to the site mentioned above.
And then there’s the ‘Is Barack Obama Muslim‘ version of the site with the ‘a’ alphabet dropped. This particular one ranks the highest on both Yahoo and Google for the ‘is barack obama muslim‘ phrase, taking the no. 1 spot and even outranking Obama’s own official website. This appears to be the most established version of the three; Yahoo site explorer shows that it has 10,762 incoming links compared to the hundreds for the two other sites.
These mini-sites were created to provide answers to a specific question, one that is rather popular because rumors of Barack Obama being a Muslim have been circulating through viral emails or blogs. The goal of these two sites is to debunk the rumors by funneling traffic to Obama’s official site, which provides a clear explanation on the topic.
So the strategy is pretty clear-cut here. Create websites to answer specific search queries or deal with specific topics. Then use them to generate leads or send traffic to your home base.
Here are some elements which I think would really make these mini-sites work:
- Single-issue. Deal with too many topics or questions and your webpage will lose its immediacy. It also makes sense, especially if you’re using a keyphrase domain name.
- Reference-friendly. People link to Wikipedia pages because they provide an overview or in-depth info on a specific topic. A way to make your site more linkable is to make sure that it covers the issue in full, through original content and external links.
- Novelty/Simplicity. A single-page website is easily digestible. Two or three more pages may be fine. Use up too many pages and you’ll end up losing the novelty factor and becoming a full site. You don’t have to just use black text on a white background. Clean, unique and topically relevant site designs will always help.
- Viral components. To make people spread the word, encourage them by providing sharing options like an email-a-friend feature or link-to-me banners. Favorite tools that marketers have used include quizzes, videos and polls. Anything interactive.
- Sell elsewhere. The funnel-site is not the place to make money. The injection of a commercial motive might make it less linkable, novel and appealing. Remove or obscure commercial intent by not putting up ads and selling elsewhere (email list or master site).
The Obama examples given above use the exact keyword search query as the domain name/title tag, which encourages people to link using the same words. You don’t have to stick to keyphrases; brandable non-keyword domain names are OK too, although I think its best to at least have some keywords in the title tag, since you’re going after visitors from search.
But then again, search engine algorithms can be unpredictable. Such a site might fall out of favor for some reason and lose its rankings. That’s why its important to give it a good push at the start by promoting it on social media channels to make sure that it serves its purpose as a lead generator/traffic funnel. The resulting links might also help your site develop trust.
So, what do you think of these mini-funnel websites?
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Interesting way to build traffic. Thanks for putting this together!
Matt
Definitely an interesting idea. I think some people tend to view one pagers as a ’sales page’ site and move on. Whether selling an idea or a product, I think you’d have to be careful in how you present it. But I can certainly see, if done right, how this could be a great way to funnel in traffic.
Good idea with the min-funnel websites, and the Barack example is very good.
This is a really interesting concept. I really like your example. It’s something that seems so simple, yet we keep missing it somehow.
Thanks again for some great ideas!
So, I understand the idea–also fits in with the niche websites–but I’d rather spend my time optimizing pages on my blog rather than driving traffic to it from other sites. Just makes more work.
I’ve tried some of the automated niche techniques as part of a class but someone needs to explain it more clearly.
Any takers?
I think the elements you lay out are a great start point for making these funnel sites. Thanks for that little extra insight to the concept.
Gary McElwain
I really haven’t read too much about this as a way to increase traffic. Thhere is always a good time to hear something and of course I would hear it from your blog. Over and over again I get new ideas from your blog and find it hard to get new ideas anywhere else. My expertise is to make the things I already know how to do perfect and then get new ideas from other blogs.
Now with that, it seems very time consuming to do something like this just to get some traffic to your blog or web site. However, if someone would have the time then this is the perfect thing to do. If you are a blogger or just a web site owner then you want to make sure to find as many ways as possible to get traffic to your blog.
An amazing little idea! A very clever use of Google’s preference to rank keyword match domains highly for a query. Will this algorithm fall out of favor in the future? According to SEOmoz, Google’s Matt Cutts has publicly said that:
“Owning a keyword match domain name is going to carry some weight in Google for the foreseeable future.”
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lessons-from-the-domain-roundtable
Being a Brit, when I first heard his name, I assumed he was Irish… Barack O’Bama. Not that that would preclude him from being muslin or indeed Muslim.
How will the funnel site rank high on Google if it has no content and is not updated regularly? Is the URL keyword enough? I’m skeptical about this method. I know that sales mini-sites use Adwords to get noticed. I rarely if ever see mini-sites in the first few pages of Google when I do searches.
Great Idea!!
I have been using some blogs with specific keywords in the title to link to pages on my main blog. However now I think that using a unique website would be better..
Thank you for the trick..
This world is full of weird people, and SEO practitioners are worst of this kind,
An absolutely brilliant marketing strategy that is actually a novelty because I never would have heard of it had I not come to this site. Hmm, I wonder if anyone has ever tried to use this as a lead generation tool in the past and how it has worked.
I have run into people who say that the best length for articles is in the middle if you want to rank well with Google. But I have found sometimes a pages with only a sentence will rank better for specific keywords. This type of site has worked for me in the past.
Good idea and interesting to set it up that way. I was curious how you could go about this practice for a company rather than for someone’s personal blog?
Craig
http://www.budgetpulse.com
I have to admit this is an interesting way to funnel traffic.
That’s definitely a great idea to get traffic.
My question is:
Is it applicable in all the niches?
Actually something I have never thought of. Well done, sir.
Excellent way to get targeted traffic to your website. Misspelling is a common thing and I never thought on taking advantage of it.
Great tip
I have been trying to find a good SEO company for awhile now - its definitly a valued resource. Having specifically targeted keywords to identify your site and your product/service from what I have learnt is a good way to build a focussed customer targeted web site. How you turn traffic into sales - well…I haven’t quite worked that out yet!
As always a great blog with great conversation - and absolutely love your cartoon graphics too!
This is quite an ingenious application of the google bombing principle! Like any tool, it can be used for good and bad intents… but with a little creativeness, I can see this working to a positive effect. Thanks for the insight and keep up the great work, Maki!
By the way, have you considered organizing a little hands-on experience to test this theory? With the readers base and support from this website alone, I feel we some intereting synergies could be easily built up. You could set up an experimental one-page website pointing to DoshDosh, and ask everyone to participate in a link building campaign focusing specific keywords of your choice. You’d get a nice traffic boost, and we readers would get an actual sense of the effectiveness of this technique.
Consider this! You’ve been providing all of us with thoughtful theories for a while now; why not set sight towards the realms of practical experimentation, now that you’ve gathered such massive crowds? I think that makes perfect sense as natural progression.
Kindly,
P.
I think this kind of SEO trick only bring traffic in the short term. And you are not building your business for one hit and run but long term goals.
I pursued this tactic profusely about a year ago, buying up keyword domain names to create little “keyword islands” that would funnel traffic back to my main site.
I found it better to create these mini-funnels off the main site:
http://www.mymainsite.com/keyword
Since these are static pages with little future updates, they perform better in the engines as branches from the main site than separate domains. Unless you aggressively build back-links to each keyword domain name island, this will almost always be so.
Lot cheaper to branch off the main site too (no domain purchases/renewals).
That’s pretty amazing timing, I just started a similar project last night.
It’s for a project about DIY hip hop, which is a niche with a very specialized vocabulary for success — “getting put on,” “blowing up,” and “grinding” are all unique to the discussion. Rock artists and earnest “Music 2.0″ academics just aren’t reaching the rap audience, which is a shame, because their advice is still EVERY BIT AS USEFUL. I’m going to be using my funnels to link out to useful information, more than just simple self-promotion…after all, it would be blatantly dishonest to pretend my site is the only one in the field.
I also want to thank John W for the comment above me about using subdomains — seems obvious now but I didn’t think of it. Thank you, sir.
Good research. Thank you for sharing the info.
Certainly seems like a sound theory, I wonder though about the stability of one page sites, as they no longer rank as well as they used to.
To answer Mwangi who says — “I wonder if anyone has ever tried to use this as a lead generation tool in the past and how it has worked.” :
We’ve created several websites and we call them subsidiary sites or support sites , the purpose of which is to help drive traffic to our main site and to get more leads. It has been very effective so far, and we continue to work on other “mini-sites” for lead generation.
A very enlightening post, Maki. Great example too. =)
@Small Business Entrepreneur, Nathalie Lussier, Gary Mc Elwain, Sarbhut Singh, cherran
You’re welcome!
@ Motivate Thyself
There are actually quite a lot of one-pagers that aren’t sales-y. If you’re trying to sell on such a site, I think you’re more likely to turn off people than to turn them on. ..
@ Diana
I’m not sure what you’re referring to what you talk about the ‘automated niche techniques’ but these funnel sites can work in every niche, whether your main site is a business or a personal blog.
@ Blogging Millionaire
Actually these sites are not difficult to make, especially since they’re only one page. You could use a ready-made template and just customize it a little. I reckon it’ll take two hours or so to get something up (if you’re quick). But I understand if you’re just blogging for leisure or if you’re a hobbyist, something like this might not be relevant to your goals.
@ Brett Borders
Cool. Thanks for the link, I didn’t know Matt confirmed the value of keywords in URLs.
@ David Bradley
Heh. Now that you’ve mentioned it, O’Bama does sound a little Irish.
@ Tycoon Dreamer
Well, look at the examples I’ve listed in the post, the third site outranks many established websites like Snopes, CNN and even Obama’s official website just by the strength of the title tag, keyword URL and of course, incoming links using the same anchor text. It is possible for sites to rank high on Google although much of it depends on your skill in promoting it.
You might also want to consider adding actual content on the site so that you might catch visitors from other search queries.
@ Mwangi
You can try. I think many affiliate marketers do use one-pagers and PPC advertising to build leads. It definitely works well if everything is done well.
@ Stephan Miller
Thanks for the feedback!
@ Craig
You do it the same way whether its for a company or a personal blog. Pick a topic to cover, determine a keyword phrase or go with a brand-able domain and think of an angle for the site. Design the site. Fill it up with content..include text or other multimedia and then promote it.
@ Hasan
Yup, its applicable in all niches.
@ Annabel Meade
Try reading up on the topic of usability and sales-page conversion. You’ll learn some new things on how to better turn traffic into sales. Remember to test your changes with a group of users (if possible) and thanks for liking the cartoon graphics.
@ Pedro
Hmmmm. I’m lazy but I’ll think about what you suggested. Thanks!
@ Profit Blogging
A good blog or business uses short-term marketing campaigns to fulfill long term goals. These funnels are a means to an end although I should say that they may actually bring consistent traffic over a long period of time and certainly should not only be seen as short-lived achievements.
@ John W
I agree with you. Putting static pages on your site leverages your existing site authority/trust and might even help to increase it. It’s certainly an alternative to building multiple smaller sites, which I favor because I’m more adventurous (and ambitious).
I like to think in terms of the future. As each of these funnel sites receive more links and grow, they can be transformed into standalone sites or brands of their own. Or can be flipped for income.
I think the middle way is not to take on too many projects. Creating one funnel site every fortnight or month seems reasonable. It’s also a matter of skill, if one is not knowledgeable in the ways to promote these sites in a way that’ll make them viral, it might not be advisable to take on the task of building too many pages.
@ Justin Boland
Good luck with your plans. It sounds very interesting. -)
@ Everyone else
Thanks for all your comments!
This is the first time I heard of such a thing, but it is interesting to know that it works. But what amazed me more is that “that someone” also thought that someone might made a mistake with the long phrase.
I still remember when I was still ignorant about You-tube and because I just overheard it, I typed U-tube and it lead to me to a video site which I thought the real You-tube.
Brilliant people…
Thanks for sharing, though!
I would only use that for some joke or just some traffic. I wouldn’t quite expect results leading to my main project. Fun fun though. Thanks!
These things are popping up all over the place:
http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/
Thanks Maki for yet another great post. This would be a great idea for an information heavy website like mine. And thanks for John W. for suggesting the use of the main website to alleviate purchasing updating new domains.
That looks like sooo much work? But I guess the outcome could pay off really well. I wish I had that kind of free time!
Nice article, Dosh. I think the mini-funnel concept is a great idea.
Not only can these mini-sites funnel traffic to your main page, but they can themselves generate revenue through affiliate traffic and adwords revenue. If they don’t click to your main site, they may click and ad or affiliate link. Win, win, win.
I can now have one of these sites up in about a 1/2 hour to an hour. Mine are PHP based with a database backend for the content and branch off the main url.
One template is reused for all of them and the database supplies the unique affiliate codes, adwords channel, meta tags, title, description, and even paragraph text for each mini-funnel. The url string provides the key to the record in the database.
Truthfully I can have a new site up in 5 minutes since all I need to do is enter data into the DB. It’s the text copy that takes research and writing.
Examples here:
http://rarevictorian.com/shop/?site=belter
http://rarevictorian.com/shop/?site=John-Jelliff
If one wants a keyword domain pointing to these you can register it and do a 301 permanent redirect.
Fantastic Idea. Thanks for the post!
Maki, matter is so small but the impact of it’s presentation is very effective. We usually avoid (or ignore) it’s effectiveness. This small example makes the big difference.
Thank you for sharing funky way of trafficking
Interesting article. I just attended a webinar by Compendium Blogware. Their focus was to categorize your blog posts and then organize them into seperate blogs. I assumed under different domains. The purpose was to improve your natural search rankings. The concept here sounds similar and now there approach seems to make a bit more sense.
An interesting concept. I will have to try this and see how well I can manage it…
I think another important aspect would be to lead them to the right page…
Like in case of the above example, they link to main site (the master site) and link to the page which describes or in this case dispels the notion that Obama is a Muslim clearly. So perhaps you could have included the ‘landing page’ also as an important aspect in creating the mini funnel…
It is important because, for the visitor moving from a mini site to the main site is to address his pain point, he expects it, and if it doesn’t specifically address that he will feel cheated.. I guess the ’sell elsewhere’ point covers this to a certain extent, but since you didn’t explicitly mention it I thought maybe I should add this here…
You rounded up the point very nicely with that example of Obama’s site.. was that the inspiration behind the idea of this post.. or you went looking for such an example after your Eureka moment
I believe this is a great little idea but needs lot of efforts in a channelized way to increase website’s traffic. I have also not heard of this much before. But one can try this, I will go with this if I have amply time for my website to see how effective this link building strategy proves.
Thanks for sharing a new idea and enhancing our knowledge base.
How boring all this talking about american candidates!
Very interesting article, however!
Mik
This is a really original way to get moe traffic! Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Hi,
Indeed there’s something that I’ve done with my username at SU. Instead of pastles I’ve chosen pastles. Hopping that my name will appear if someone misstypes pastels.
Now, of course that I’ve read about the domain name being important, but when I’ve picked the name for my website, I wanted it to be pleasant to hear and say. And to be honest I wasn’t reading much about SEO. So I’ve chosen Hushcolours and from that I want it to be a recognized brand.
Before Google or Yahoo existed were people searching those words on the net ?
It’s all about branding, it’s about selling an image.
Keep up with these great articles. I quite enjoy reading your articles.
Kind regards,
José
well,. this is certainly a great technique as it add links that will point to you. This allow visitors to get to you from many websites. Great post’
Smart idea - love the concept!
I am going to have a think about how to implement this strategy!
Thanks
Interesting and very direct response to a current issue. Now hopefully in November everyone remembers
Useless pursuits.
nice one maki. it’s clear that domain names with smart keywords play really well. i’ve found that some laser-precision with keyword-age in domains and key parts of nav and top level content can have a hugely beneficial effect - such that page length and make-up becomes less and less relevant….
Wow, you are so right and I so understand and agree with the things you have said here. The one big thing on my site is my subject matter covering several different things though. I talk about family, helpful tips, news and so on. I do have however try to keep rotating the subjects so they keep coming around, so my readers know and those that are new to my site. I don’t know if this is a bad thing or not for my site. I get traffic coming in on different posts that pertain to them or what they are looking for, but I don’t want it to hurt my site in the long run either.
Thanks for your info.
Good idea with the min-funnel websites, and the Barack example was interesting… a funnel example may be, many themed pages on certain ways to make money, leading to your main affiliate marketing pages right?
Interesting article! I can report from several years of experience that it is possible to get number one rankings in Google with a one-page website - just as long as you don’t have any serious competition!
I ‘m glad we are not talking about chicken with lipstick!
Thank you for putting this together. It is something I will definately look at. Great idea with high impact if you are serious about it.
I’ve used this technique for some years and have had a lot of success. And I’m still not sure about how Google feels about them. Here are a few of the problems that I have discovered over the years. But before I start these are just my thoughts and I would welcome feedback from anyone who knows different
1. If you are creating more than one domain then make sure that you host them seperately, consequtive ip addresses can cause problems with getting sites indexed. Ive found hosting them abroad can still work well.
2. Use a different template for each site.
3. Restrict the number of key words per mini site to two or three maximum
4. Use a blog, they are cheap and serve the same purpose, plus they are easy to update and although trackbacks have lost some of their momentum they can still have an impact.
My startup is considering employing at least a dozen “micro” or “mini” webpages to generate leads from very specific market niches.
That’s a great idea! Really worth to try.
Thanks! - Very intersting article.
Hi,
I think qualified traffic from Google is fantastic. But no-one knows how Google works today nor in the future as their indexing algorithms are secret. This means that what ranks well today, as you point out, may not rank well tomorrow. For this reason I think it is vitally important to have a good mix of traffic to your site. So Search Engine and Social Media traffic. I also think that Social Media is becoming more important and that the valuie of social traffic will increase over time.
cheers
Tony
wow you are genius and especially the example you used to explain your concept is awesome. I loved your idea and the way you described that. Thanks a bunch.
Mudassir
http://www.socialmediaplex.com
I have read all the posts but I do not understand the feasibility of this strategy for the new entreprenuer. How do we know if this is a financial sound strategy? I am guessing for those in the Obama campaign have the necessary whereabouts and funds to have such a strategy but what are your thoughts for the small business ?
I came up with a similar idea myself (but expressed less clearly than you’ve done here). I think there’s definitely something in the concept.
that was a nice idea. But of course, before you run into this kind of gaining traffic. First, consider the fact that you need to invest for a domain name. It is good to make sure that your keyword delivers. But of course, risk is another aspect that we need to overcome as bloggers. Greater risk have greater price.
Nice Idea…Interesting way to building traffic. Although there is some flaws but still, It’ll show you results intently.
I remember a site called helpwinthisbet.com a while back that turned into a viral masterclass. It was a clever site that didn’t even need to encourage people to share. Got something like 34million hits in just a few months.
Silly thing was it only started to link and monetize after the hype had died. They could have been on to a real winner either way.
Thanks Maki, something for us to thing about!
Thanks for putting this together
Great idea and an interesting 1. Will definately try this.
Thanks for the fine documentation, Maki,
A few things to consider, by the way:
- It helps with a controversial keyword search query.
- We are not all president candidates – that would have been helpful for our application of this strategy.
- In my experience single page websites aren’t doing as well in the search engines as multi page original websites.
- Its smart to be the first to consider the search query and to be able to give an answer.
- Such one page websites remind me of the door page discussion in ‘old days’. I think there are some similarities, here just with individual websites and not with single pages. – So I guess we have to be aware of the same issues that downgraded the usefulness of doorway pages from a marketing perspective.
I used a variation of this in the early days of a cross-niche blog, to build profile in a second national domain using “disaggregated” single niche blogs in the separate tld - cross-posting a subset of relevant articles.
John
This is a very interesting article. Amazing idea!
Definitely an interesting strategy Maki. Appreciate you posting this.
Great article with some good insights. It is also important to make sure that there is the proper structuring of the funnels themselves and properly directing the users. This is a good article that talks about that a bit.
Harness the Power of Landing Pages
Thanks again and keep up the great posts!
Search engine traffic is definitely the most valuable source of traffic. Using keywords in a url is great for ranking, you must have that option checked for your blog to be placed well using SEO tactics.
Very interesting article and Hope I can apply this too. T
it is good article regarding traffic building.Thanks for sharing this info.
Very interesting indeed. I must applaud the Obama administration for being so up-to-date with technology with their involvement with Facebook, Youtube, the iPhone (yes they do have an app) and now this fancy way of directing traffic to their website.
The big question is how manage to get such well-placed SERPs for those specific sites, especially when only the word NO is there.
I guess it has to do with the domain name. However, not everybody can make such an accurate URL. What can they do if they are not sure then?
Interesting post by the way.
I think its important to make sure 1 site is established and functioning properly before moving on the next
These type of sites also known as bridge pages or splogs tend to get de-listed from Google as they see them as pure spam sites.
I agree withthe concept of small funnel websites howvere ithas its drawbacks. Last year we purchased two domain names with our preffered keywords for this purpose. We developed the sites and began marketing it for a fewmonths. However search engine marketing is a vast field and no matterhow much time we put in there is always something more that could be done. After a while however due to time pressures we have only focused on our main web design company website. Others have got neglected and the traffic and ranking has stagnated.
Great insight. I need to consider doing something like this for my company Nectar http://tastynectar.com/blog
I was waiting for you to talk about the main reason these sites are so effective-
Relevance
The google gods love relevant content and web creators that take the time to make laser beam specific sites should get rewarded. In the social media space quality trumps quantity. That’s why you do so well Dosh.
I’m just about to get ready to do this for my site, although I’m not sure if it would be useful unless I could figure out some highly searched keyword that’s related to my site. I’m under the impression that this might only work for really specific sorts of sites.
Great idea, I am going to look into this further for my site..
Nice post, Now I will try to apply these on my website too
Excellent article, thanks for explaining all of this so clearly.
I’m still learning the blogging game, but it’s interesting to see what can work, and work well for some of the top marketeers in the business… I’m sure some big bucks were spent on that promotion, just to get rid of adverse publicity for their candidate.
I need tips like these to generate traffic to my own site, especially what works and what does n’t. Thanks again.
Daniel Hunt
http://www.technicalarticles.co.uk/
Good post, thanks! I’m new to all this SEO stuff so stuff like this is great!
Great post and great idea! I will try this technique very soon and I have my own ideas now. Thank You! I’m sure that this method will bring me much traffic!
We’ve done this successfully and it was well worth the investment! Best advice - get a good developer who can keep it all automated for you. This strategy can work with any site/keyword set. Use GA to figure out what keywords people are currently finding you with…
This is great advice - we have been doing this with our clients for YEARS.
Initially we were the first ones to do this back in the Web’s early days.
Now it is quite a popular tactic among online Web site promoters
Many thanks to DoshDosh… very informative
My response in two words: Google Analytics.
P.S. I think Julie (right above me) said it best.
Great campaign.
I’m still trying to know more about “funnels”, a new concept for me.
Interesting idea-bold yet lacks vision, creative yet gimmicky. I think I would create a funnel site if it were a question that was really important to me…and I mean Really important. And it could be answered succinctly.
I guess I have learned (the hard way) that a site will take off, and add to my life in a good way, if it pleases more than me.
So, if an immediate need is filled, by answering a question, to the satisfaction of the visitor, I would think this is a Great idea. But, it seems hard to believe that this could be accomplished with one page.
I guess it depends on how easily satisfied the visitor is with brevity. Personally I think it is a mistake to underestimate the web surfer - sophisticated and deep minds are abundant in the cyberspace.
Thanks for a well-written article. It may be time to give this idea a try. Sounds like it might work - especially if you can come up with a viral idea. The Obama guys have really worked all aspects of the online world during the campaign.
The search engines are always looking for quality content. I totally see the benefit of trying to rank a number of websites with mis spelt words. however new domains and websites still have a that newbie feel to them and as such may take time to climb to the top of the search engines. Building your website up with quality content and back links will always get you to the top of the search engines.
If i was to invest my time in to anything separate it would be a blog..
That’s a cool couple of pages, and some nice incites into mini-funnel web pages. Thanks a bunch!
This post disappointed me. I expect better and quality stuff from you.
Quick traffic from mini-sites doesn’t server long-term purpose.
But won’t traffic of this nature be really short lived? And how does the funneling actually work? Is his main site anyway related to Obama or muslims?
This is a great example.
Is this the same as using blogs as the mini funnel sites and using them to drive traffic to your main site.
I have a few blogs that do this. The articles I put on my blogs are different articles about similar keywords that are on the main site. This way I pick up some people that have searched for the “keyword”, but in a different way. Its like filling in the gaps or covering all of your bases.
Interesting case study you have here. I have been thinking about that approach lately: using a highly searched phrase as the domain name to a site. It seems to make sense in order to drive traffic. One thing I’ve noticed about a domain name I own is that a lot of searches that click through to my site are related to one of the words in the name–even though my site is not directly related to that word. So I know that domain names are very important or at least give you a leg up on the competition.
This is a concept for long tail traffic that is well established. Original content is a requirement. The real goal is a relationship with people so the doorway is only an SEO concern. As far as SEO goes many are using already optimized link juice sites like Squidoo and Hubpages which makes it easier to rank for that long tail keyword. The hard part is to continue to update content on all these little sites. Try to get focused content using an RSS feed to republish tagged content onto the new pages. Then you have new snippets appearing regularly. Because these sites already have lots of back links to the main domain you can rank your little page sometimes by effective bookmarking. I guess there is no avoidance of work. This is part of what I’m doing to get traffic to my future users free pages.
Interesting Idea to make more traffic
Intriguing information. Obama really isn’t a Muslim?
The funny thing is, I actually had one of the Barak sites sent to me a few days back, and I can only wonder if this is the Obama campaign setting these up. A quick whois search brings Katherine Elliott of Olin college up as the registrant of isbarackobamaamuslim.com. It could very likely be that she is an Obama supporter and happened upon a great marketing idea. I guess the only question I have here is while the mini-funnel may have a viral aspect to it, how do you eventual convert this traffic to your site?
That’s a great idea. It will add more links to your main page but you will also have to build links to it to gain rank and hopefully be included in searches. Are social media channels enough for link building purposes in this case?
Does this affect pagerank in any way? I remember reading something in the Google AUP saying that domain forwarding can have consequences on pagerank.
Great tips for improving site traffic thanks alot
Its my first time to her about funnel sites on how they work and what’s their mechanism in doing its fuctions. Does this really work in reducing traffic?
Wow, this is some great information.
thankyou so much dosh dosh…
I love your writing style, it’s so precise and clear. I just subscribed to your blog and hopefully learn your internet savvy. Your ‘how to use Twitter’ was so clear. THANKS.
It’s good but I guess it requires you to buy several domains just to get a good ranking in the result
I have tested out a variation of this before for an online marketing campaign and it worked well. I got the idea when I saw more and more one pagers popping up driving traffic to a specific site like the Obama example. This is somehing that can really draw some awareness to a concept of product that should be explored further.
thanks to the idea, its great.
SEO is a never ending tasks.
i like your blog, it has a wide variety of topics.
This is an extremely interesting article which seems to explain something so simple.
I may try and implement something like this for my site.
Thanks for the tip
great post. It’s really very important to constantly think about how search engines really do rely on a domain name in a lot of cases. Domains can play a huge role in authority and in achieving good results in algos. I like the term “mini-funnel-sites”
I like this idea, and will be implementing it as a good alternative to the landing page method. I’m a little worried about Matt Cutts warnings of Keyword laden URLs. I think it could also be concurrently used as a microsite to tie traffic stats to offline marketing campaigns. Kill two birds with one stone!
It is an interesting idea - I have tried it in the past and I have to agree with several others that it is better to use either static pages on your primary site or use your blog to get the same results.
I have found that a very content rich site will do more in the long run than a number of mini sites.
Content is king - long live content!
I have been looking into this but find getting these kind of pages listed very slow.
Is there something to be said for making a website for each and every product you sell from your web store? With say a review and relevant keywords?
Is this likely to pipe customers and pagerank to your main web store? Or will goggle see it as an unimportant single page site?
Great topic, neat idea. Keen to see where this can go.
Thanks for sharing, and nice example (with Barack Obama). Relevant & resonating. Cheers, Marc
Great Information … I will be using this technique for my WebSite.
Keep up the good work!
Best Regards,
Shontavia G.
Very interessting post! I will consider buying a second domain!
Hello Maki
Mini sites are good ideas for pros, but noobs like me, who can hardly manage a simple blog like http://www.drbikash.com is quite a problem in itself.
It is really for the internet savvy marketer.
But then this type of new and innovative ways are the best part of pro sites like that of yours.
Keep it up is an understatement for what you are doing, but still then Keep it up.
Dr Bikash
Idea with “NO” is so clean
I have never heard about site like this. Thanks
Very cool idea. I can see their being a problem with people thinking slaes page when they see the one page…but the key to fix that is to offer great free content. Move the free line up. If you want someone to click or opt in - give them something worthwhile.
http://www.justinpopovic.com
A combination of focused keyword targeting and link building. Interesting idea.
I’ve learned about this mini-funnel websites way back in time when they were still called “gateway pages”. I do agree that it does help in building traffic since you practically have a one-pager that’s focused entirely on a particular keyphrase. Once people visit this mini-funnel, all you need to do is merely subtly encourage them to “click that link” to your main site.
Cool!
I have used this technique in the past, and had OK results. It works best if you can find a very specific search term, that not many others are targeting. I agree with the article that you will do better if you leave advertising of the mini site.
I’ve long thought about something like this, creating a broad menu of landing pages that lead into a site with a core message. I think it’s a great idea and this post really has me thinking about it again.
Seems like it would rank high because the web title matches the search inquiry 100%. If you type in “Is Obama a Muslim” the site drops to #8 since the search phrase no longer matches exactly, but since it is very close the site is still on the first page.
Really great idea from the marketing team of Obama and a great post from Maki. It might be useful to me, too…
Interesting idea. Thanks!
Great information thank heaps. Newbie Marketer from Oz
So say you have 50 domains in a niche market with little competition. By using the same graphics with different text to suit the domain name itself, which is related to the main site, would google consider it related and penalize you for it? What is the difference betweena mini funnel and a mirror site? I have little competition, and own the brand, before relaunching new site want to put the multiple domains we own to use. Any help for me?
This is a great article, and in revisiting it, I think there are also some negatives to mini-funnels as well:
- since its kind of a longtail strategy, its cumbersome to manage many mini funnel sites, vs. a main site.
- google is starting to exaggerate benefits of old domains and keep new domains in a sandbox for longer, thus starting a new mini-funnel site may not earn you much google rank for a while.
A good alternative is to use your main site and add mini-funnel ideas to it, e.g. using subdomains or categories/pages to separate keyword content into its own hub.
I actually did something close to this on my blogs. I initially had this forum which had a PR2 from google. I then created a wordpress blog as a subdomain of this account. I was surprised how fast the subdomain grew because visits to the main domain were affecting it. I think so because I cannot account for why its ranking rose rapidly. To date, I have 3 subdomains on that account. The highest is a wordpress blog with a PR4 in less than 50 days of launch.