How One Page Websites Can Achieve High Rankings, Google Confirms

 In a recent Google Search Central SEO office-hours hangout, John Mueller was questioned on the hotly-debated topic of website authority. Specifically, Mr Mueller sought to address the age-old question of whether a website needs to become an authority in its niche to rank well.

The short answer is, apparently, no - it doesn’t.

But what was even more interesting is how Mr Mueller confirmed that even a one-page website can climb the rankings to prominence. Meaning that not only does a site not have to be packed with thousands of pages of content to rank well, but also doesn’t necessarily need to be an authority site.

Here’s what Mueller said in response to a post on Reddit:

“I think you can make good one-page sites. So from that point of view I’m not too worried about that.”

“I think the Reddit post, as far as I remember, was something along the lines: ‘I created 30 blog posts, and they’re really good, and therefore my website should be authoritative.”

“And from my point of view, you going off and creating 30 blog posts does not automatically make your website authoritative.”

“And especially for the higher or the more critical topics, it’s something where you can’t just create 30 blog posts on a medical topic and then say: ‘I am a doctor I’ve written 30 articles.’ So that was the direction I was headed there.”

He went on to emphasise how smaller businesses need not concern themselves with becoming a market-leading authority, simply to rank well and pull in traffic from their main target audience:

“For a lot of websites, it’s not that you need to be seen as an authority. You essentially put your content out there. If you’re a small business you’re selling something. You don’t need to be an authority.”

“And especially things where like one page websites they’re often very focused on this one thing and you don’t need to be an authority to do that one thing.”

“To sell, I don’t know, an ebook, or to give information about opening hours for a business. It’s like, it’s just information.”

“So from that point of view, having a one page website, I think it’s perfectly fine.”

Of course, Mr Mueller was keen to highlight the point that while a one-page website can be fine, it’s better to use it as a basis to grow and develop a deeper site:

“With regards to starting out with a one-page website, I think that’s fine, but I would think about where do you want to go from there at some point.

Maybe you do want to create more pages and try to find a way that you don’t paint yourself into a corner by saying, well, I have to put everything on one page all the time. But rather expand when you see that it fits.”

Still, confirmation that a quality site with just a single page has every potential to climb the rankings and pull in a ton of qualified traffic.

How To Improve Your Website’s Visibility

If you conduct a lot of your business online then ensuring you maintain high search engine rankings should be a major priority for you. There are plenty of ways you can do this – indeed, sometimes the advice you can find online is overwhelming – so the key is to find a search engine marketing strategy that will work for you and is simple enough to maintain long-term. Here are some examples of some of the steps you can take:


Design Is Key: To begin with, please do make sure that the look of your website is clean, high-impact and that it is easy to navigate. It’s no good spending a lot of time driving traffic to your site, only for visitors to be put off by its content the second they arrive. This will not encourage them to recommend other visitors and your visibility will suffer as a result. Also, remember that SEO is not just about getting visitors to your site – it’s also about converting those visitors into clients.

Update Your Content: Your website rankings will quickly drop if you don’t update your content regularly. Not only this, but if your site does not contain fresh information it will seriously undermine your credibility with clients, who will not be encouraged to return. Make sure that you are updating it with something new at least once a week, whether that is a fresh product line, an industry-specific article or news items.

Hire An Expert: Many people are put off by the extra cost involved in hiring in an expert to develop their search engine marketing strategy. It really does pay off, however, as they will be able to do your market research for you and identify the keywords you need to incorporate in your content to get relevant visitors to your site. Not only this, but a person whose job it is to know all the latest online marketing strategies and technologies will be able to give you a much better chance of gaining higher search engine rankings than your competitors. They will, for example, be aware of all the latest analytical tools so they can check your stats and use them to make your future marketing campaigns more targeted and efficient.

Blogging And Networking: Become a blogger to show off your knowledge of your industry sector. If you build up a reputation as somebody who knows what they are talking about, your readers will want to click on the link to your website because they will feel you are somebody trustworthy with whom to do business. The same applies to social networking: go on Facebook or Twitter and get involved in discussions relating to your sector. This is a great and free way to gradually generate a buzz about your business.