Next step is done!
I shared in my last post and video that I have chosen a specialized direction for my web agency—offering SEO services and SEO-optimized websites for wedding professionals.
This week, I took the next step in getting it out into the world: launching a tiny, tiny website about my new specialized service.
It was a pretty quick process, about three hours of writing and three hours of building the site and choosing images. The result is a simple four-page website with Home, About, Service, and Contact pages.
It took a lot of discipline to keep it this simple, but my goal in this process was to keep it very basic, a minimum viable product to start gauging interest and start sharing this specialized service.
Even though I had my eye on the prize, I still had to talk myself down from overthinking it. I make websites for a living. I have a vision for what I’d love the site to look like and the content I want to include in the future. But I had to remind myself—Only the necessities.
For example, I had created a whole blog section for the home page and had on my original content plan that I wanted to launch with at least one blog post. Pretty soon, though, I realized a blog post wasn’t in the “necessary” category and that I could add that section back in later.
A Few Things I Threw Out the Window to Move Toward Launch Faster
I could feel a few things slowing me down in getting this out. I didn’t want to sit around perfectionist-obsessing over these details when I had a site ready to launch. So here’s what I decided not to worry about too much right now:
A Brand Name
I don’t have a brand name for this branch of my business. I tried to think of anything interesting and catchy that would appeal to wedding professionals, and I still feel stuck.
So I let it go and gave up. I launched it with the name “Sara Does SEO.” It’s super basic but also clear.
In the future, I’d love to come up with a brand name that is separate from my own name. But for now, this will work well enough for testing this direction.
A Domain Name
This was frustrating, but it seemed like every single .com domain with the words “SEO” and “wedding” has been registered. Just another reason I went with Sara Does SEO and saradoesseo.com.
Eventually, I intend to change the domain to match whatever brand name I come up with.
Custom Design
I love going through the design process and collaborating with my co-worker Kristin on custom design. As fun as that would have been, though, it is overkill for the first stage of testing an idea.
Instead of going custom, I used a great new stock theme from StudioPress called Authority Pro. It was built for content creators, so it was a great fit out of the box. All I did was customize colors and the body font.
Why I Chose To Create A Whole New Site
I want to share why I chose to create an entirely separate site on a separate domain from my current agency website.
I had received some advice early on that when I decided on a direction that I should just create a custom landing page on my current website. It already has a domain history and some authority built up, and it’s already there. However, I decided against it for two reasons.
1. 100% Focused on the Niche
I personally like the idea of having a whole site that is 100% geared toward the niche. When I send a wedding professional to this website, all they see is information crafted just for them, without any of our past work mixed in.
I think this is going to make us look so focused and specialized, which I think has a lot of value.
2. Risk Aversion
What I definitely didn’t want to do was take over my current agency site with my specialized service information and confuse clients.
I want to leave the 11Web website as a generalist agency for now, so we continue to receive the general leads I’m used to while I work to get more work in our specialty.
This plan feels less risky to me, to have a separate site I can simply take down if this doesn’t work out, with my main website unchanged.
Next Steps
I’ll continue to build this site out. There is a lot of helpful content I’d like to add, and I have a strategy in mind for how I’ll drive traffic to the new content.
But, for now, I have something simple up to get me started and share with referral sources to get the ball rolling.
I love this idea! It’s so simple but REALLY effective. I’ve been wanting to test the waters with certain niches myself and this is the perfect way to do it!
Thanks Katherine! I do hope it is effective. I definitely think it’s a low-risk way to test an idea and see how much traffic and interest you can generate. Would love to see your microsite if you launch one!