Setting Up Satellite Sites

When you begin working with a client to build a website, you know what your objectives are, and you’re going for the lowest hanging fruit first because you’re looking at hidden resources and existing resources on where to tackle first. Once you start working on those, you need to fire as many arrows as you can.

In the military, when the United States invades whatever country they want to take over, they throw everything at it. They bomb it from up high, they shoot cruise missiles from the water, they do everything that they can to just obliterate the place before one human even sets foot on the place. It’s safer, it drives the industry for them to build more bombs to make more money for the Vice President. It’s the maximum use of available resources.

But you do need to prioritize. Here’s the key. Where most people fail is, once they start implementing tactics, what they lack is leverage. The leverage comes from something that is important, automated systems. If I can set it up and then go away, that’s good. I’m stuck on military analogies. If I set up a trip wire over here, I can go away and leave that and if someone comes along when I’m not there, wham!

If I can set up satellite websites, landing pages where people can come in, that’s the idea I’m looking for. You have core keywords and you have secondary and tertiary keywords where people are looking. I might own a retail store but someone’s going to type in brown shoes and someone’s going to type in kids’ clothing but I still want to drive them to my main retail site.

But on the internet I want to type in brown shoes and I want to land on a page that says brown shoes. That’s what I call the 7-11 strategy. 7-11 is a big chain of corner stores usually with gas stations that sells bread and milk and convenience goods but they charge you double. But it’s a real estate play. Do you want to be the great big department store, the old imperial Darth Vader store built in a great big mall? You’ve got four floors and escalators and try to drive everyone to that place and hope they find what they’re looking for amongst all your stuff.

That’s how a lot of people build their websites. They only have one, what I call, store front, versus having these satellite sites where people can come in through different doors. That’s leverage; it doesn’t cost me any more, versus 7-11. Every two blocks it costs them more in real estate. Online it doesn’t cost us more to have more landing pages. A big mistake people make, is just having one core site without having satellite sites or landing page sites or back doors or whatever you want to call them. Really it’s about taking leverage between the tactics.

Let’s say you get invited to go speak somewhere. Do you pre market it? Do you tell your list you’re going to be there speaking? Do you help the people who invited you with their marketing? Do you give them the copy to put in their newsletter and on the website, rather than letting them write about you? When I’m invited to speak somewhere, I want to fill the room. I don’t want to leave it to chance they might fill the room. Do you at least audio record it? Do you video record it?

This is even if you’re going to take an excerpt from it but you don’t plan to make a product. I can take out at least thirty seconds where I was brilliant for a minute even by accident. You want to take that. Now I can put that on my website. Now I can put that on YouTube. This is where most businesses don’t suck every drop of juice out of every opportunity.

Then I do a press release that says I’m going to be there. I call everyone in town that I know and say, do you want to do an interview live and in person because I’m going to be in your city? Then once I’m done, I put out a press release that says, I was in that city. You send a list to your list saying, if you’d like an excerpt or an audio or a transcript of the talk I gave in Sydney, then send me an email.

You need to make the most of every single opportunity you have to gain the most mileage for your website.