Friday, 7 November 2014

One Page Websites Kill SEO, Adwords, Traffic, and Usability

Posted By Leslie Gilmour | Tags Blogging, Business, SEO

(Image Credits : Awwwards.com)

Twice this week I have had enquiries from customers that have one page websites. My advice has been disliked by both owners. These website are very popular at the moment. They look good with all the graphics, transitions, and fonts. However one page website are useless for search optimisation and developing a good or even average traffic flow from Google.

Don’t use them and here is why.

Lack of Targeting

The two example this week I have looked at have been a private plane charter and the other was a candy hire business – businesses that could not be much more different.
The charter company is based in central Europe and offers short haul flights. The candy company is based in Ireland and offers the hire of chocolate fountains and various sweet products.

Neither are using their website to its potential. For example the candy company does not have dedicated page on the hire of chocolate fountains – therefore being found in search for this service will be almost impossible. The charter company does not have a dedicated page on their route from Prague to Linz, and again they will never be found in search.

Adwords Problems

Google Adwords using ad rank to prioritise adverts ranking and cost based on several metrics. The main metrics are bid amount, Ad formats, quality of advert, and quality of landing page.
The quality of a landing page for a one page website is problematic. Normally a group of keywords can be used to target separate pages. Each of these pages have a title, heading, and content relevant to the targeted words. This does not happen on a single page website therefore quality score is harder to influence.

Google Analytics

It is important to monitor what visitors do when they arrive on a page. Do they bounce, do they preform the action we want, what other pages do they visit, do they look at the about page, which page has the highest abandon rate or exit rate?

None of the above information is now available. Analytics will show how they found your site, perhaps some keywords, and how long they stayed.

Bounce Rate

It will be interesting to see how one page sites fair with Google as bounce rate becomes a more important metric measuring a websites usefulness to searchers. By their very nature single page sites will have a higher than normal bounce rate.

No More Long Tail

You have one title tag and one description for your whole website. The title tag pretty much defines the subject of the page, (assuming relevant content). The website is left with only targeting head keywords. The amount of business that will be missed by not being able to target longer tail is huge. As head keywords become harder to rank for and Google eats up more of the first page results the return on investment for single page site will be less than multiple pages.

Social Media and Sharing

If you have a great looking page it will likely be shared more across social sites. However how many times will a user share one page? Encouraging users to take actions on websites is difficult, more so if you have nothing new to offer on a regular basis. What reason do they have to come back to your site again and again?

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When One Page Works ?

Image credits : instantshift

If you are marketing a single product or service a one page website can work. However I come across very few businesses that only have one product and even if they do it is hard to image not breaking out the product into various pages like features, costs, benefits, etc.

Mobile

I agree that one page can make sense for mobile users. It is easier to swipe around a screen than wait for a new page to load or touch menu items effectively. However I would still have links to subsections for more information from each section on the “single page” home.

Blogging as a Work Around

This stops the site being a single page and dismisses the whole concept of displaying all information on one page.
Blogging I have argued before is a very good way to bring more business to your company via Google and social. It is how you illustrate your experience and expertise.
However as soon as you start blogging there will be the temptation to create pages targeting each service or product, which is not the aim of a blog post.
Thankfully most single page websites are built on WordPress. This makes it easy to add the pages required and link off the menu or home page sections.

SEO for a Single Page Site

Sometimes you just have to work with what you have. A single page site needs to be built in HTML5 for the following to work. It is not generally advisable to use more than one H1 element in a web page.

Define content sections and using HTML5. If you create sections it is allowable to use a H1 within each section. Treat each section as if it were a separate web page and use the appropriate headline, images, and text. Link to each content with anchor links. If you do write a blog use the anchor links as areas to link to from time to time. Anchor links #thispage are not to be confused with anchor text.

Have Your Say !

Leslie writes at Cube SEO in Ireland and Cube Online Marketing in Glasgow.  He offers Google Penalty removals, SEO, and Google Adwords Management.  You can catch him here on twitter.