Mini Sites for PPC are dead
Author: glend
I was recently taking stock of my current inventory of made for PPC sites. I looked at old sites, what we are currently working on, and what we have planned for the future. As far as sites created for the sole purpose of capturing PPC traffic to affiliate offers, I can honestly say the mini-sites we know and love are dead.
History
First a little PPC history. In 2005 and before you actually could slap up a single page landing page and do well with PPC to affiliate offers. Then when quality score started really developing and being enforced in early 2006, everyone started making the typical 5 page mini site with an article page, contact page, about page, privacy policy, and site map. These “mini-sites” as we called them we basically just an attempt to boost quality scores. They worked great for a while too. The problem is, they don’t work anymore. Google, and now even Yahoo and MSN can see right through these sites. Based on the quality scores they are assigning to this type of content, they seem to classify them as thin affiliate site. You may have some mini-sites still running and doing well (I know I do, knock on wood), but eventually their days are numbered. And going forward, I wouldn’t even try building a new mini-site for PPC purposes.
Destination sites
So where I do I see the current/future status of PPC landing sites? All of the new offers that we have been trying this year are built around what I call full destination sites. Basically you can think of the standard mini site described above, but increase that about 10 times. Articles, interactive content, dynamic content, and video even are now on these sites. This is in addition to the actual landing pages of course (that content is not on the LP). I’m also talking real unique content, not scraped wikipedia junk. Ideally, I also like to have most of the site indexed on all 3 search engines before starting the PPC campaigns for good quality score.
Negatives
The downside of course, is the time, effort and money it takes to build out these sites. You have to plan ahead to put real work into building a solid site.
Positives
The added benefit of building these destination sites, is that you are setting yourself up well for organic traffic down the road. This is a huge benefit when the offer eventually expires. You can also use the non-landing page sections of the site for extra revenue with other related offers, email/newsletter list building, or even things like Ebay affiliate or Chitika stuff. The site also builds residual value as a standalone website, unlike single landing pages which are pretty much worthless when the traffic stops flowing.
So beware when you read some of these older guides or ebooks telling you to build a mini site for PPC. To me, that is a 2006 idea and it usually won’t cut it in mid 2008.
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