Last updated on April 13th, 2015 at 01:36 pm

I have been having a long conversation recently by email with a client who is determined to have a website with just a single page.

Now, if he was looking for a site like this one which is obviously a site that is designed to have a just a single page and then, if visitors click on the “more information” button at the bottom of the page, send them to another site I’d agree with them.  This is a site that is meant as a “teaser” as it were, it doesn’t have any intention of telling the visitor everything about the subject, just enough to whet the appetite as it were and send them to another site that has more details (and in this case the option to buy a product).

However, from the conversations that I’ve had with them it seems that they are looking for a site more like this one (for a freelance PA based in Peterborough) or this one (for a pizza oven builder in Holland which uses some interesting transitions between the “pages”) and I’m not 100% sure how SEO friendly they are when it comes to getting results for multiple phrases in the searches.  I usually work on the principle of optimising websites page for a single main phrase and a secondary phrase and this has worked well for me in the 18+ years I have working in the SEO and Internet Marketing area. It seems to me that if you only have a single page then you can only really optimise for a maximum of two phrases.  Of course if you are in a niche market (as the two examples above are) then it may well be that people will only tend to search for your services or products in a couple of ways but if you are in a more general field (accounting or running a hotel for example) I am willing to bet that there are many different phrases that people will use to try and find your services – for example I’ve just checked on hotels in my local town and it seems that Google says that people search on (in no particular order) :-

• B&B in xxx;
• Bed and Breakfast in xxx;
• Hotels in xxx;
• Accommodation in xxx;
• 3 star hotels in xxx;
• 4 star hotels in xxx;
• Holidays in xxx; and
• Business travel in xxx

The list above is just a very small selection but I hope that you see what I mean – how would you optimise a single page website for all of those phrases?

I’d be interested in hearing what you think about the idea of single page websites. Can you see them working for your business as a main site or can you see them being used in the way that the first example is being used (as a taster)?