What’s a Mini-Net?

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Many website owners have not just one website but many and all on a similar topic.  And because of this, they oftentimes like to link them together in the hopes of getting a better position in the search engines.

Ideally, their hope is that if they link all of the smaller niche websites to the main website, that this will give that main website more credibility in the search engines.

This is what’s called a “Mini-Net”.  A set of websites that one person owns and that are all inter-linked together.

Let’s take an example shall we?

Let’s say Webmaster Joe likes the topic of hair removal.  So he builds a website that focuses on laser hair removal.  But, Webmaster Joe has also learned that if you build other, smaller websites that talk about a nichier (is that a word?) topic yet one still related to the main overall topic, and then link them together that this will help where his main website is listed in the search engines.

So Webmaster Joe creates 5 more websites all on similar but less competitive terms:

• cosmetic hair removal
• skin hair removal
• upper lip hair removal
• affordable hair removal
• hair removal surgery

These smaller, nichier sites aren’t high-quality by any means but they all have an article or two on them about the main keyword phrase they’re focused on.

The point of these additional sites is not to have them rank well but to have the main website that talks about Laser Hair Removal rank well which is his money phrase.

So Webmaster Joe visits a hosting company (HostGator is a good one that I personally recommend) and purchases a shared hosting package that allows him to have multiple websites on the same IP address.

What this means is that Webmaster Joe can add as many websites as he wants to his hosting account; doesn’t sound like much of an issue until you realize that they’re all on the same IP address.

This is important because when search engines like Google come to pay a visit to all of these websites, they’ll see that they’re all linked together but they also all reside on the same IP address which diminishes their importance.

Think of it like this:

Let’s say that someone recommends a movie to you.  Later, five other people recommend that same exact movie to you so you start to think “Wow!  This must be a really great movie!”.  You find out later that all of these five people live in the same house, maybe they’re related to one another maybe not.  The point is, the only time you’ve gotten a recommendation to see the movie was from someone who lived in that house.

All of a sudden, that recommendation doesn’t seem so great does it?

The search engines feel the same way with websites.  Obviously if there are multiple websites all linking to one place, but all of those links reside at the same address (the IP address) of the site they’re linking to, then all of a sudden, it doesn’t look so great to the search engines.

And will eventually get you penalized.  Can I say that for certain?  Can I guarantee that?  Obviously, no, since I don’t run the search engines but I can tell you this.  It’s not something that I would recommend you trying during your online career…unless you’re into that kind of thing.

The bottom line is, a mini-net is nothing more than a group of websites usually all owned by the same website owner that link to one another in the hopes of getting better rankings for those websites.

Do these mini-nets always reside on the same IP addresses?  Obviously, no.  The savvy website owners have come to realize that this will get them penalized in the search engines, and so they’ve scoped out ways of getting around this IP issue.

Does that always work?  No.  As a matter of fact, it borders on “black hat seo” techniques.  Or in other words those techniques that the search engines frown upon.

But, that’s not the purpose of this post.  This post is to explain to you what a mini-net is and why people use it.

As always, leave your comments if you feel up to it

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