Casino mini-sites?

[Greg]

I was just reading a very cool blog post on PAL from Newjabber and he got me thinking. In just about every vertical outside gaming we see affiliates launch tons of mini sites and 1 page landing sites. Now the latter plays a little more into these offers being Adwords friendly, however Mini Sites are still an awesome strategy. Casino portals to me tend be massive and boring. This of course is a generic statement, but often true. Would a good strategy be to launch a ton of small sites, all focused on a few terms and inter-link them once indexed? Thinking out loud tonight and would really like to hear some feedback.

I will say this as a rebuttal, mini sites lack one key element to repeat business: Domain Trust.
Instead of putting several multiple sites on sub-niche topics some people run them as sub-domains or separate pages on one main domain because they are likely to attract an equal amount or even more search traffic at a faster rate.

[Tom]

I am actually starting my first casino sites. They will all of course will be "mini sites", as I test out the casino world.

The problem I see creating one big site is that there are already several big authority casino sites out there. Maybe just build a big site on the side and continue to add pages to it as you build other mini sites as well.

[mojo]

I prefer bigger sites mostly for the trust factor. I would like repeat visitors and it builds my mailing list. I don't think it's nessacary to have 1000's pages on one site though but that's just me. Mostly it's whatever works for you.

Maybe just build a big site on the side and continue to add pages to it as you build other mini sites as well.

That's the ticket if you are considering mini sites.

[pdjoe]

Maybe just build a big site on the side and continue to add pages to it as you build other mini sites as well.

That is what works for me. My largest site has about 300-400 pages. I probably have 2 or 3 sites with a 100 or so pages and 6 or 7 sites that have less than 30 pages right now.

I add a little to all of them depending on what I am in the mood to work on that day.

If I was new to the casino world, I would stick with 1 site until you have 100 pages or so. It helps you learn as you go and then branch out into other niches with new sites.

[Mark]

The problem I see creating one big site is that there are already several big authority casino sites out there. Maybe just build a big site on the side and continue to add pages to it as you build other mini sites as well.

Yes, initially you will have an uphill battle to climb since there are a number of authority sites out there already. But, the more you work on it and the more you develop your site, eventually, you could be one of those sites.

Everyone has to start somewhere.

Mark

[pokerprop]

I don't see why it would be much different then poker. In poker mini sites work great and it seems the nature of casinos that it would seem that mini sites would work even better, but idk.

I'm going to get a mini site up next week and see how it goes.

[pdjoe]

I'm going to get a mini site up next week and see how it goes.

Good luck Pokerprop,

Let us know how it goes or if you need any help.

[CorryC]

The biggest issue I have with mini sites is the fact that I can never keep them mini. No matter how much I plan on keeping the sites small, I always want to add more. I find it difficult to believe I am ever going to gain anything from a site with 10 pages.

I know that it can work very well if done the correct way, but that takes a lot of patience and a lot of hosting.

[pokerprop]

For me a mini site is 15-25 pages

[Spry]

Once you have the content uploaded, the site optimized for conversions and SEO optimized... what kind of strategies do you employ to gain traffic? I admit this is probably my weakest area... I can get the content, on page SEO it, make the pages themselves fairly conversion driven and then from that... just kind of let google do their thing.

I feel we should do more, but exchanging links is booooooring and time consuming, and not many sites want to link to mini-sites anyway, and I don't really want to just go swapping with other mini sites either for the most part.

What kind of marketing do you do for the mini sites? I have 4 mini-casino sites out there right now and while the traffic they are getting is converting suprisingly well... the overall flow of traffic sucks (partly due to them being on avg less than 2 months old so far).

Anyway - any tips or innovative ways to do some marketing for these sites?