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This will be an unusual deviation for a components standpoint but hang in here.
As a whole there are four actual pieces; the Domain name, the website itself, Keywords for the Niche, and finally Backlinks.
The domain name itself needs to be catchy enough to invoke curiosity on the visitors part. Many times during a search for a keyword phrase I will catch myself looking at the domain name before I even read the text describing the site.
The website is just the guts of the minisite. How it looks underneath is not that important and having something complicated can be overkill for the desired benefit.
Keywords whether they are phrases or of the Long-Tail flavor are equally important because they define the base theme of the site. The graphics can not do that but rather the keywords have that ability.
Backlinks. These could be considered the nerves center for the site as they are needed so that the site can be found within search engines and other links like in articles. The more you have the better and they can produce a fair amount of traffic.
All of these work together to produce a site that is workable, readable, find able and functional. In fact, there is some strong evidence that simple will out perform other types of sites like blogs. However, more time will be needed to actually determine whether that will be a true statement.
Irregardless of how others might break these down. These components are definitely at the heart of having a functional minisite.
If youre interest I have a few more post that might be helpful Buddys SEO Tactics or AdSense Buddy or The Buddy System or go back to the beginning of Buddy.
