Comparing Mini Site Providers
By Michael Sumner • Oct 19th, 2009 • Category: BlogI just wanted to discuss Mike Cohen’s most recent post, where he “compares” mini site development services. He claims DomainMassDevelopment.com has great on-site SEO, while all other providers offer “weak” SEO or have none at all. I decided to take a look at every example site he posted to see how good he really is at SEO. And for this test, I checked the exact match of the domain (e.g. for the domain PlasticSurgeonReviews.com I searched for “plastic surgeon reviews”), which is easier to rank for. Let’s see the results:
LandSurveyors.com
Google: 3
Yahoo: Not in top 100
Bing: Not in top 100
AOL: 3
Comment: Ok, not too bad. This has 14,800 exact searches per month and 974,000 competing pages, so it has some competition. But that’s the first example posted which will obviously be the best, so let’s keep going.
PlasticSurgeonReviews.com
Google: Not in top 100
Yahoo: 7
Bing: Not in top 100
AOL: Not in top 100
Comment: Ranking well in Yahoo for a very long-tail term with only 480 exact searches per month and 178k competing pages, but nowhere to be found in the other search engines.
NouveauArchitecturalStyles.com
Google: Not in top 100
Yahoo: 33
Bing: Not in top 100
AOL: Not in top 100
Comment: This is about as long-tail and low competition as it gets… with search volume so low that Adwords doesn’t even have data on it, and 20,800 competing pages. Being on the third page of Yahoo and nowhere in the other search engines isn’t very impressive.
DubrovnikVacations.com
Google: 11
Yahoo: 33
Bing: 5
AOL: 8
Comment: Decent work on this one, he didn’t launch it that long ago and it is ranking pretty well across the board. But there’s only 170 exact searches per month and 47,600 competing pages, so it isn’t something that is hard to rank for.
ParabolicSkis.com
Google: 15
Yahoo: Not in top 100
Bing: 4
AOL: Not in top 100
Comment: Not exactly a high competition term with only 720 exact searches per month and 40,200 competing pages. Not on the first page of Google, and nowhere to be found in Yahoo or AOL.
BondRatings.com
Google: Not in top 100
Yahoo: Not in top 100
Bing: Not in top 100
AOL: Not in top 100
Comment: Seems like the search engines dislike this one across the board, even for the exact match. This one has more competition, with an exact search volume of 4,400 and 247,000 competing pages. Mike says his sites have the most content of all providers and that search engines love them, but I guess in some cases more isn’t always more.
GovernmentCareers.com
Google: Not in top 100
Yahoo: Not in top 100
Bing: Not in top 100
AOL: Not in top 100
Comment: Same deal as the one before, a little competition and the site can’t crack page 10 on any major search engine. 8,100 exact searches per month and 250,000 competing pages.
EasternCaribbean.com
Google: Not in top 100
Yahoo: 47
Bing: Not in top 100
AOL: Not in top 100
Comment: Another decent domain, but it doesn’t stand up to even moderate competition. This term has 2,400 exact searches per month and 1,350,000 competing pages. This one is on the fourth page of Yahoo, and nowhere to be found in other search engines. Not the results you would expect from an SEO expert.
Now let’s take a look at a few MiniSites.com sites… based on Mike’s comments about our “weak” SEO compared to his skills, you would expect to not find any of our sites anywhere in the search engines, especially for terms that are much, much more competitive than the examples above. Well, let’s take a look:
Beachwear.com
Google: 10
Yahoo: 8
Bing: Not in top 100
AOL: 7
Comment: 33,100 exact searches per month and 2,450,000 competing pages. Much more competitive than any of Mike’s keywords, yet it ranks well despite our supposedly weak on-site SEO.
Motorsports.com
Google: 6
Yahoo: 1
Bing: 2
AOL: 2
Comment: There are 90,500 exact searches per month for this term, with 14,700,000 competing pages. That is major competition but the site we made stands among the best sites on the internet for the term in the eyes of the search engines.
Housekeeper.com
Google: 5
Yahoo: Not in top 100
Bing: 3
AOL: 4
Comment: 22,200 exact searches per month and 6,340,000 competing pages, yet 3 out of 4 of the top search engines deem our efforts good enough for strong placement on their first page of results.
Sitter.com
Google: 5
Yahoo: 3
Bing: 4
AOL: 4
Comment: All four major search engines think this is worthy of the above-the-fold, front page placement even though our SEO, according to Mike, leaves much to be desired. Odd, isn’t it? There are 8,100 exact searches and 20,500,000 competing pages, and the search engines see the site we made as being among the best.
I could go on all day with examples such as Wrenches.com, Bifocal.com, Bicycle.com, PetSitter.com, PaternityTest.com, MagicShops.com, etc., but I think it is pretty obvious that Mike Cohen is not the SEO expert he claims to be. His example sites, which he rarely shows to anyone without an email request being sent to him, are almost all failing in the search engines while he claims to be the best at SEO among all the mini site providers.
He also claims to have the best designs available, and said “That is why we offer 100% customization and none of the website’s we deploy will ever have the same exact look.” Look for yourself… seven of his eight example sites use the exact same theme, all of which are barely modified. How does he make a comment like that in the same post where he showcases a bunch of examples that all look the same? He must think we’re obtuse.
It is easy to see why his prices are so low with the quality of product he puts out. But would you rather pay $99 for a generic design that doesn’t stand up to the competition in the search engines, or $225 for a nice looking site that will get love from the search engines? That’s a pretty easy decision if you actually believe in your domain enough to make a real investment in it.
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Michael Sumner
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Great post. I was lucky enough to read the earlier version too
- Paul
Thanks Paul. I was advised by a reader to tone it down a bit
People shouldn’t get suckered into thinking that more content is always better, or even that ranking well in search engines is a guarantee of success. You really have to scrutinize what is going on.
If you have 600+ words per page on five pages, but you don’t rank well in the search engines, was it worth the money? If you rank well in the search engines, but the term doesn’t get many searches at all, are the few dozen extra visitors each month going to pay for the development in a reasonable amount of time? The answer is no.
The real litmus test is whether or not a mini site provider can rank well for keywords that matter, everything else is hype.
I have not yet tried any of the minisite development services but my hesitation arises from personal experience and examples like those you illustrate above. Adsense clicks on a lightly-searched phrase or on a minisite on page 3 or lower of Google/Yahoo make it difficult to justify spending on development even at $99. No doubt there are cases where it works out fine but I’m just not convinced that it works out well on average. Thanks for the comparison.
Do you have any examples of recently registered domains (2005-present)? Search engines give big points to aged domains so showcasing results for recent regs would be a fair comparison IMO.. especially since most of your potential customers do not own these single-word gems. Thanks
First of all, you’re exaggerating the value search engines put on old domain names. Second of all, Mike’s first example was registered in 1996, and the last three examples were all circa 2000 and 2001, so I think the comparison is plenty fair. It’s much harder to rank an old domain with extremely high competition than it is to rank a fresh reg with low to no competition. Mike couldn’t rank the last three domains in his examples… and they’re all aged pretty well (8 – 9 years old). That alone disproves your theory that old domains get “big points”.
Ok.. if you want to disprove my “theory” then please answer my original question:
“Do you have any examples of recently registered domains (2005-present)?”
If not, best of luck to you.
It would probably take me half the day to find a site we did where the domain was registered in the last few years, because we turn most of those away for not having high enough search volume or CPC. We mostly develop premium domains that were registered in the late 90s and early 00s. If you don’t understand what I said in my previous comment, I’m afraid we’ll just have to agree to disagree because I don’t have hours to waste finding an example to rebut your false assumption that search engines give a lot of undue credit to old domains. Mike Cohen did worst on the old domains because they are better and have higher competition… QED.
All the examples I gave of our results were registered between 1997 and 1999. Half of Mike’s examples were registered between 1996 and 2001, and while the other half were fairly recent, they are extremely low competition and easy to rank for. How is that not a fair comparison?