Tuesday, November 3, 2009

The Advantages Of Mini-Site Development Over Domain Name Parking

By Dhruv Patel

Before we discuss the advantages of mini-site development over domain name parking, let us first recap a few of the basic principles surrounding the issue.

Domain name parking is the name we use when someone buys a domain name, but he has no plans to set up a website there. All he does is create a single page and fill it with ads of some or other type. He hopes to generate money when people type the domain name in their browser's address bar, visit his page and then either click on some ads or buy something.

Domain parking is only really effective if you are fortunate enough to get hold of a completely generic name, like e. G. Shoes.com. You should get a lot of website visitors from people directly typing the domain name in their browser's address bar. Chances are also good that they will be interested in shoes, so if they end up at a page filled with ads about shoes they are likely to click on one. One of the drawbacks is that you are unlikely to get a lot of visitors from search engines, because you have no meaningful content on the page.

A second option is what is generally called an MFA - a mini-site created very specifically with Google Adsense in mind - "Made for Adsense" in other words. On this type of mini-site a visitor will actually find some sort of information when he visits the domain name. The information is often created by a computerized system, and makes no sense whatsoever except for containing a lot of keywords relevant to what the visitor was looking for. The purpose is not to give information, but to force the visitor to click on one of the ads and make money for the website owner.

It's not hard to see why this way of doing things is eventually doomed not to succeed. The site visitor will feel he has been cheated. Whenever he encounters this domain name again in a web search, he will give it a wide berth. The advertiser who pays when people click on one of the ads on that website will not get any value for money either.

The final and best option is a high quality mini-website. Following this approach you will actually try to provide your visitor with information 100% relevant to what he was searching for when he went to the search engine. Your mini-site could be small, but it should pack a punch. The site visitor should leave feeling that he actually accomplished something. A satisfied visitor is also more likely to click on one or more of the ads on your website, creating a win-win situation for both of you.

Many website owners prefer to go for a parked domain page with ads, or a nonsensical MFA mini-website simply because the former two are much less work to create yourself, or much cheaper to have created by someone else. If you are not able to buy a totally generic domain name, like cars.com, you will however be much better off following the quality mini-site approach than either a parked domain page or a MFA mini-site.

The advantages of mini-site development over domain name parking are therefore clear in most cases. Unless you have an extremely generic domain name, attracting millions of chance visitors, you will be much better of a with high quality mini-site.

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