There are different types of websites — media, entertainment, ecommerce, business, etc. — each with its typical structure and approach to design and SEO. Sometimes it’s enough to have just one page on a website — for example, to represent a company or portfolio. While single page websites provide the opportunity to be creative in their design, their potential to SEO leaves a lot to be desired.
The question is whether it is possible to optimize these onepage sites? Could a one-page site hurt your chances of ranking on Google?
What is a onepage site?
In simple terms, onepage sites are those websites that consist of a single HTML page, and all the necessary sections of the site are on that same page. Like all multi-page websites, a onepage site usually has a menu bar at the top. Yet instead of loading new content on new pages, this menu simply scrolls up or down a single page, navigating the user to a particular section of content.
Limited SEO possibilities for onepage sites
Your biggest obstacle with a one-page site is SEO. You will not be able to use advanced techniques and most SEO experts claim they hate the idea of these sites. Google Webmasters’ answer to how Google views onepage sites is quite vague and revolves around the idea that a website must be useful to rank well. It is indeed important, but no matter how useful your site is, being limited to one page leaves plenty of SEO opportunities.
Why Single Page Websites Are Bad for SEO
Let’s see what makes optimizing a onepage site so difficult:
The semantic core is limited.
You can’t pack a page with as many terms as you want so the hardest job will be segmenting and prioritizing your keywords to use the most important ones.
You can’t produce as much content as you want
One page is all you have and you cannot provide your SEO with multiple pages, blog posts, and other pieces of content.
There is no room for siloing and other powerful structuring techniques
Bucketing is a concept of grouping related content within the site hierarchy used to improve internal linking. With a page on your hands, you simply don’t have enough content to group and structure.
You can only use one title and description for the entire site
The Title and Description tags are crucial parts of how the site appears on the SERPs, with a page you only have one chance to get the most out of it.
Search engines find it more difficult to understand what a onepage site is
Search engines rely on robots that analyze different types of data and the technical structure of the site. With less information to inspect, they might not rank your website well.
Search engines do not index each section separately
Even if you make anchors that link to different sections of the page, Google won’t know how to index the page as a whole.
Conclusion
A one-page site gives you the opportunity to present all your information in a linear fashion, attracting users to a particular action. It allows for faster launch and testing, as well as unlimited design creativity, but leaves you with a fairly narrow range of SEO strategies.
Sommaire
- 1 What is a onepage site?
- 2 Limited SEO possibilities for onepage sites
- 3 Why Single Page Websites Are Bad for SEO
- 3.1 The semantic core is limited.
- 3.2 You can’t produce as much content as you want
- 3.3 There is no room for siloing and other powerful structuring techniques
- 3.4 You can only use one title and description for the entire site
- 3.5 Search engines find it more difficult to understand what a onepage site is
- 3.6 Search engines do not index each section separately
- 4 Conclusion
