What happens when your client decides to create a single page website and ask you to optimize it rather than going with the usual multiple-page architecture? Well, you find yourself in a predicament! It is because if you are not that well-versed with single-page web optimization, you’re sure to end up plucking your hair out of frustration.
However, things have changed now! Since the search engine giant, Google, has now become more developed, intelligent and smart over the years, it has finally acknowledged the existence of single-page websites. Consequently, it has done some updates to its crawlers and algorithms, which is why we are seeing a plethora of well-designed and well -ranked one-page websites on SERP, these days.
In this article, I’ll give you a detailed tour of what goes behind the optimization of these websites and how you too can get started. Let’s see:
Pagination is The Way to Go
Googlebots, aka web crawlers, tend to favor the paginated structure, which a multi-page, i.e., conventional website already supports by default. But, how do we restructure the format of a one-page website? By making sure that we don’t leave our site without any organized pagination.To paginate the structure of your page, you need to create clear and distinct sections, each of which serving a specific purpose. This also makes navigation a lot easier. Plus, you may define a suitable keyword to each section and optimize it for that section. For instance, you may use a keyword for a specific section’s headline or h1 tag, body content (copy), image alt tag, etc. and use a different keyword for the second section’s content, and so on.
Employ DIVs to Paginate Content
The best way you may go about separating and classifying each section on a one-page site is by assigning a separate <div>.For Instance:
For the top section, home, you may do the following…
| 1 | <div id=“home”>…web copy …</div> |
| 1 | <div id=“services”>…web copy…</div> |
Optimize the Anchor Links
Since there are no separate URLs or links to optimize, so what left is the anchor link. These links are used to jump to the required section on the same page. Hence, the only way to optimize those sections is by optimizing their anchor links. You may do that by using the same DIV ids for the anchor links and use those links on the navigation bar, for optimal result.Suppose you’ve a Flower Delivery Services section on your single-page website. You may start by naming the DIV id first:
| 1 | <div id=“flower-delivery-services”> |
| 1 | <a href=“#flower-delivery-services”>Flower+Delivery+Services</a> |
Link Building Isn’t Dead
Now you may wonder, “How do I earn backlinks for different anchor texts for a single page website?” Well, you already have that answer if you haven’t forgotten the above point. Yes, I’m talking about the “anchor links”, the same links that you use for creating sections on your site.
To create anchor-text backlinks on authoritative sites, take for instance the blog of Logo Ping, you may contribute to their blog and include your link in the author bio like this:
| 1 | <a href=“http://example.com/#flower-delivery-services”>Flower+Delivery+Services</a> |
Distinguish Sections with H1 Tags
If you have a fine idea of traditional website optimization, then you must know how important it is to have an optimized H1 tag. However, it is also important to remember that websites should preferably use one H1 tag on a page and use H2 or H3 for other headings. But, how would you do that for a single page website? It’s simple, use one H1 tag for each section separately, and the crawler will sort the information itself- since H1 tags indicate the distinctness of the content that follows it.Content Readability and Relevancy:
Due to the abundance of information jam-packed on a single page, you must be wondering how would Google sort so much content, and whether there would be any relevancy issues or not.
Don’t worry! Google won’t do that, because as I said that it is more matured and intelligent now than it was a decade ago. Not so long ago, Google introduced its Humming bird algorithm that shows results that match not the keyword but match closely the entire search query itself. Isn’t that a big break for you now? This is great news for single-page websites because nothing else can beat such websites when it comes to presenting a content packed with all the essential information.
However, needless to say, the content must be unique and relevant.
Don’t Forget the Content Freshness Factor
To keep up with the ranking you need to make sure your site complies with the Google’s content freshness factor. When it comes to content, Google isn’t as forthcoming as you may think. It won’t give a second thought to penalize your page if the content quality guidelines aren’t followed.Therefore, try your best to keep the content on your single-page website fresh. Though keeping the content fresh on a conventional site is easy, it may become a bit tricky with one-page sites. Regardless, there’s a definite solution to this problem! You can go about ensuring the content freshness on your page by updating some sections of the page such as portfolio, customer feedbacks, etc. Or, you may also create an external blog and show links to some of the recent posts there, on your single page site. You may also include your small Twitter feed on one side of your site for the sake of freshness.
