The One-Page Wonders Of SEO

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Saturday, 27 of October , 2007 at 8:05 am

I had an argument with an acquaintance of mine about one-page websites. Her take was that they don’t do well overall because of the link factor. Since Google, and now all search engines, value links, especially internal links and inbound links, then it seems to reason that one-page websites shouldn’t do well. They would have to build a huge volume of inbound links in order to make any waves at all, she said.

A second reason my acquaintance discounted one-page websites was because of the search engine saturation factor. Her take was that search engines like big websites, therefore smaller websites don’t do as good overall.

The Disappointing News About Pages, Links And SES
Well, I hate to the one to disappoint, but that’s not true at all. Her facts about links and search engine saturation aren’t wrong; it’s her logic that I dispute. And I dispute the logic on two grounds - the first being experience and the second on something yet more logical.

It helps to know why things are a certain way. Knowing that inbound links, external links, and a larger number of pages is more favorable over fewer is not enough. You need to know why because the why could be a clue as to how to make the whats work for you. And it will most definitely be a clue in learning how to succeed without the whats at all.

Yes, spiders crawl through links to index the rest of the Web. Yes, internal links are good because they give clues to the search engines about what each page is about so that the search engines can go about their jobs of indexing them. Yes, inbound links are good because they provide search engines with valuable information about the value of certain pages based on the reputations of the recommending pages. And, yes, more pages is desirable because search engines tend not to like static websites. Rather, they like to see new information added daily because it indicates that there is a person out there who is behind the information and who is striving toward perfection.

One-Page Whys And Whats
There, you have the whys. Now what if you do the opposite of the above for different reasons altogether? Can you succeed? I know you can because I’ve done it and seen it. But why?

The answer to the “why does the exception prove the rule” question lies in other pertinent truths about Internet marketing as well. It has not been proven, for instance, that pay per click ads affect SEO, but it has been proven that they drive targeted traffic. Therefore, it is entirely feasible that you can build a one-page website and effectively drive targeted traffic to it through pay per click advertising and make a huge killing. Of course, you can do the same thing with articles and drive up your link popularity in the process, but that takes time.

The Uncanny One-Page Conclusion
Pay per click aside, however, there is one more reason why one-page wonders can do well. It’s the “search engines crawl pages, not websites” reason. You see, every web page does exist within a vacuum. All you really need is one link from somewhere that has already been crawled to that web page and it too will be crawled. Then, the on-page SEO will do the rest. Will that web page do better with inbound links and perhaps some sister pages to give it a boost? Perhaps. But with the right keyword density and the proper SEO techniques, it is entirely feasible to rank well enough for the right key phrase to draw in enough traffic to profitable. Is it difficult? You bet it is. But tell me anything that is worthwhile that isn’t.

Category: SEO

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