The SEO effects of a one page website Options

[sg1]

I'd like to start a discussion on the effects of having a 1 page website instead of, say 5 pages. You know tht types-- the websites whereby you fit the "About Us", "Home", "services" on one page.

How would this affect one's SEO strategies? Is it more of a benefit to having one page whereby you are scrunching all of your content, and subsequently, your keywords onto one page? The nice thing is that when you do link building campaigns and directory submissions, you don't have to focus on multiple urls. Instead, you just use one url and switch it around with various anchor text.

Thoughts? Has anyone experimented with such a strategy?

[yannis]

Assuming that if you are going to do some decent linking campaign for your one page website and that at least some of these links will be reciprocal where would you list these links? Where would you add new content? I personally think and that is only my opinion that due to the excessive spam out there, SE have developed strategies to assess websites based on their total content (i.e the more pages the better).

A one page website is very limited. If you are into adsense websites and doing bottom fishing that is another story. But then get prepared to put about a few million websites! If that's the case get yourself $600K become a registrar and get into domain kiting!

Yannis

[EGOL]

I have a couple of one page websites that do nicely at MSN.... they don't do as well on google but are still in the index. No link exchange here.. just one way links.

[Black_Knight]

A one-page website always has less options than a multi-page website. That always means it has limitations, and is slightly handicapped (possibly a lot more than just slightly).

Your own internal links and link text (navigation) have weight in many search algorithms. Your site structure can have weight. With a one-page site there are neither internal links, nor structure.

Whatever you can do to make one page successful, you could do to six pages to make the site more than six times as successful.

Given my experience, the biggest sites tend to have the easiest time, and the most power, in SEO. Hundreds of thousands of pages is my preference if the content (and I mean real content) can be generated in that quantity with reasonable quality.

[egain]

Usability would be more of an issue for a one page site imo, obviously dependant on its function.

Having a large amount of text when entering the site often deters users from a) reading the content proceeding any further. Segmenting the information into relevant sections gives your browser a clear definition of what they are viewing and doesnt overwhelm them with sheer volume of content.

From a search engine perspective, like Black Night says, well structured well written content (in large volumes), is more likely to result in a more rounded successful campaign that will work in the long term.

[bwelford]

Unless there really is only a certain amount to say about some topic and you know that it's going to stay the same, I would always recommend a blog rather than a web page. Just keep adding slices from time to time and you'll find that you'll get a very much stronger Web presence.

[sg1]

Unless there really is only a certain amount to say about some topic and you know that it's going to stay the same, I would always recommend a blog rather than a web page. Just keep adding slices from time to time and you'll find that you'll get a very much stronger Web presence.

Barry- Actually, I can't find too many instances where the blog should be the presence as opposed to a webpage. Even a simple brochure website should first be a webpage with a blog functionality to it.

[SEOEgghead]

Ultimately, what a search engine wants to see is lots of pages with useful information that are semantically related and interlinked. This gives it a good idea what the site is about. Links to subpages from the homepage within semantically related copy, or from subpage to subpage clearly can improve rankings.

You won't get that with a one page site.

Also, what's the big deal when you say "you have to focus on multiple urls" with a multi-page site? It's not like you have to link _all_ the pages. Once a site has many links to various pages on the site, the other pages tend to benefit from the links, even if they're only internally linked from the externally linked pages.

Usability is another (worse) story. I'd avoid this idea. I see no advantage or ease in putting it all on one page so the "link juice" all flows to that one page.

[Rank and Smile]

Another reason for having multiple pages is to optimize for more than one keyword phrase. Unless you simply haven't found more than a few keywords to optimize for, you're going to want to diversify your keyword optimization...you don't want to put all of your eggs in one basket!

[randfish]

In general, I think that one-page sites have very limited usefulness. I've seen pages like this one - http://www.seobook.com/buy-now.shtml - although that's not a one-page sites, it fits the format of most of the ones I come across. These types of pages have, I've heard, high conversion rates for certain demographics (not the well-educated, techie demographics).

However, if you're doing anything with SEO, you kill yourself with these strategies because:

1. People don't want to link to pages like that - for tech-savvy bloggers and linkers, those pages are a big turn-off

2. As Rank and Smile mentioned, you have little chance of targeting more than 1 or 2 keyword terms/phrases in the SERPs

3. It's poor usability - visitors expect to be able to find unique information on what they're seeking, then link directly to it, bookmark it, send it to friends, etc. One page sites don't do this job effectively.

[Ruud]

Well, one can't really have a one-page site. Generally a one-pager becomes a sales letter like the one Rand linked to. It doesn't contain an "about us" or "services" section; it's just in your face sales copy.

You mention some possible benefits:

Is it more of a benefit to having one page whereby you are scrunching all of your content, and subsequently, your keywords onto one page? The nice thing is that when you do link building campaigns and directory submissions, you don't have to focus on multiple urls. Instead, you just use one url and switch it around with various anchor text.

Content depends on how much content there will ever be. If you do a sales letter that one page is enough.

But what in the world would be the benefit of scrunching all my keywords onto one page? The end effect is simply to dilute all keywords.

Link building's pay-off might be harder to come by too. Look, if you have 50 pages, 25% of the people will naturally link to 35 of them, each with their own text. The remaining 75% link to your home page, your domain name, and use your site name as anchor text. If you only have that home page there is nothing else at all.

[sg1]

Actually, it is possible to have a one page website. See; http://www.paros-villa.com/

How well this site does for SEs is another quesiton all together. But I wanted to dispell the myth that it would read like a sales letter.

[Ruud]

That is an interesting web page; had there been more of them on the same domain it would have been a web site even

One can surely find one-pagers which don't read like a sales letter, hence my choice of the word "generally".

[ogletree]

I have some one page sites that do well in Yahoo and MSN. It used to do well in Google until the most recent change. Google seems to give a penalty to one page sites now. My sites were old crusty domains that made it easy to rank for the term I was going after but not now. Google seems to really like sites with lots of pages no matter the quality.

[yannis]

Sg1

That is really a nice looking one page website. There is nothing wrong with one page websites if you got a simple message to get out there and you will not expect much traffic from the search engines, but rather advertize for this traffic. (For example the website you quoted maybe getting enquiries form newspaper ads, ebay etc...). In certain cases it will work but in the majority of cases success is very uncertain.

Google seems to give a penalty to one page sites now.

Not really, especially on subdomains. For example check this search (domain picked up from someone spamming these forums!). They will index the pages but the pages will not rank well as they will not meet Google's other scoring criteria, hence trying to use other methods for traffic.

My sites were old crusty domains that made it easy to rank for the term I was going after but not now. Google seems to really like sites with lots of pages no matter the quality.

Good point start adding pages and content!

Yannis

[JohnMu]

Another thing to remember, if you think you will need it, is that Adwords now does automated landing page reviews -- and apparently takes the total content / pages into the equation. One-page sites could be slightly penalized for Adwords, leaving you paying higher CPC than a larger site (perhaps even with the same content) would have. If you aren't going to do Adwords then of course this doesn't matter

John

[jwhitt]

To me One Page sites (Landing Pages) are extremly effective in SEM. The sole purpose of the users visit to the page is to fill out the form. You don’t want to delude the point of their visit by having them link off to other pages.

An example of this would be: http://manueldodge.dealershipcarquote.com/manueldodge/

So my question is, and why I landed here in the first place, what are ways to improve your SEO strategies for one page sites?

This post has been edited by jwhitt: Jul 28 2006, 09:47 AM

[rmccarley]

I have a client that I built a one page site for. When we were initially discussing it I recomended expanding to at least 3 pages and making a "brochure" site instead of a "flier".

I couldn't have been more wrong.

All his traffic comes from the SEs. And he gets 2-5 phone calls per week from it and almost all (90%) of those convert to sales.

This site outperforms most of the brochure sites I've built when you look at the numbers.

Part of the site's success is in the simplicity - the SEs aren't getting *confused* by multiple themes - the *whole* site is about one thing instead of an "about" page and a "contact" page that when you think in terms of just text holds different themes/meanings. Also, the niche is very tight so low competition is a factor (there is competition, mostly brochure sites that aren't performing as well or sites that are much broaderin scope).

I haven't done anything external as far as building links, etc. to push the site up in the SERPs. It stands on its own merrits.

The client is so happy he does want to expand the site now. I'll be a little sad to see this happen. It's been a fun project to track. With the site growth I will have to do a link building campaign. And to prepare for expanded content I've added myhittail to see what should be covered.

So 1 page sites can be effective in some industries. But preparing for expansion is essential IMO.

I'd say they ar a great way to test the waters in niche industries.