Who's Too Small To Matter? Northern Light, Wisenut, etc. - there are still a few minor search engines out there, and at least some have sound business fundamentals that will keep them from disappearing. In big picture, though, they simply don't command much traffic.

What Does It Mean? For starters, there will likely be only three significant search engine databases - a year ago there were at least seven. Interestingly, all three use "themes" to categorize and rank websites.

As a result, a solid search engine positioning strategy should focus on providing three things that three major indexes and DirectHit reward: consistent theme; significant content; and high-quality linking relationships.

A consistent theme means careful keyword selection and use - not trying to make every page stand alone, but instead weaving them together in a logical fashion.

Good content not only reinforces theme, it also provides a reason for visitors to stay on site longer, which improves DirectHit ratings.

Finally, quantity of incoming and outgoing links will matter less over time, while context and quality of those links will continue to become more important, ensuring that major directories will have plenty of customers for a long time.

I wish you success...

Finally, pick most important keywords, and use them for your page title if you can - it may look a little goofy, but if your headline does its job nobody's reading title bar anyway. Without keywords in your page title, your search engine rankings will suffer.

Step Two: Solving The Content Conundrum Content doesn't necessarily improve your ranking for a single search term, but it does broaden scope of your search engine positioning. Creating a single page of content for each of 5-7 keywords you selected will definitely reinforce your site's theme... but how can you put all that content onto a 1-page site?

For starters, you can think about using informational pop-ups. When a visitor clicks on one of your keywords, your content page can open up in a new window. The HTML tag for this is: A href="contentpage.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" - don't use a Javascript pop-up, because search engines can't index that. Use Javascript in content page itself to resize window as soon as it begins loading - that way, your visitor sees a little pop-up window and search engine sees content.

Of course, you might not even want that much linking and clicking. In this case, you can use your stylesheet to give hyperlinks same color as rest of your text, effectively hiding them. To hide them further, you can put hyperlink tags around period at end of a sentence, or space between two words.

Now, here's another way to kill two birds with one stone... my two-site two-step!

Step Three: Link Popularity The traditional link swap is two websites pointing to each other... but there's no law that says you have to do it that way. The ideal way to create link popularity for your mini-site is to create a "partner" site, under another domain name, that carries content related to your keywords. You link to your mini-site from every page, and you now have a way to swap links.

Here's how it works: you ask other website owner to link to your mini-site, in return for which you provide a link back via your "partner" site. Usually, they'd rather have a link from your partner site anyway, since it has more content on it.

I go even further when I can with a "content swap," where each site owner provides an article for other site. Your article carries links to both your mini-site and your "partner" site. You then set up a link on your "partner" site pointing to this article. Because article will have links to it from both sites, it's almost certain to be found and indexed by search engines.

Nobody Said This Was Easy! When it comes to search engine positioning, a mini-site presents a lot of challenges. Everyone wants their home page to rank 1st for all kinds of keywords, but in new era of theme-based search engines, that's easier said than done... especially if your "website" consists of a single page. I hope this article inspires you to make your own mini-site an exception to rule.

I wish you success...