Single Page Websites and SEO: A Good or Bad Combination?

Almost all SEO strategies entail launching several web pages. This is clearly the best course of action in the majority of cases, but can an SEO campaign with a single page website be successful?

In this blog, we will discuss what a single page website is, and review whether it is good or bad for SEO.

What Is a Single Page Website?

All of the website’s content can be found only on one landing page of a single page website. The user is unable to access content on different URLs via internal linking, in contrast to multi-page websites.

A single page website essentially does what it says. However, it shouldn’t be mistaken for a single-page application (SPA).

When a visitor initially sees a website, a SPA loads all of the files through a web document. The remaining content is then dynamically loaded as and when a user interacts with the website.

The user can still technically visit different pages within a SPA. To dynamically serve the new content, these are typically rendered “client-side” via JavaScript.

Why Single Page Websites Are Good for SEO

 

Why Single Page Websites Are Good for SEO

Let’s start by looking at some of the pros, or advantages, of using single page web design.

Better Mobile Experience

Google announced in 2019 that they are working to switch to a mobile-first indexing model, thus having a website that functions effectively on mobile is essential.

One of the main benefits of the single-page design is that users find the sites easy to navigate and that the sites typically convert to mobile devices much more easily.

When compared to multi-page sites, single-page sites load much faster. It is a huge bonus for most users who do not have the patience to wait more than a few seconds for a site to load.

A single page website is a blessing for those with thicker fingers because some people find it challenging to click on additional pages or tabs on small devices like smartphones.

Target a Specific Audience

Single-page websites are excellent for focusing on a certain audience and giving them a particular kind of user experience.

If you don’t have to worry about people clicking on multiple pages, potentially in the wrong order, it’s simple to manage their behavior on your site and direct them in a specific way.

With a single-page site, you can offer users with all the information you want them to see, in whichever order you see fit for your business.

If you are simply concerned about targeting a single keyword or set of keywords, this can be significant in terms of SEO.

Page Rank

A single-page website has the advantage that every link it acquires will direct to the main URL, ensuring that there is always a 1:1 ratio of links to pages. Links are one of the primary elements that influence how high a website ranks.

Why Single Page Websites Are Bad for SEO

 

Single Page Websites Are Bad for SEO

You should typically launch your website with more than one page. Single page websites have a limited ability to increase organic traffic.

Here are our top reasons why single-page websites aren’t good for SEO.

Keyword limitation

One of the major obstacles to single page websites is keyword ranking. Any website page may typically only be optimized for a single phrase with SEO, which stands for search engine optimization. Single page websites can only target a single phrase because they are built around a single topic or theme.

On the other hand, multi-page websites are not constrained by this and have a greater opportunity of improving their search engine optimization because they have more pages. It increases the likelihood that search engines will show the site by allowing each of its web pages to focus on a specific keyword or phrase. This could be essential for businesses with a competitive online presence where each key phrase counts.

Lack of specific content

Since there isn’t enough room or a way to create separate pages for each topic, single page websites are typically tougher to find specific content. Everything must be displayed on a single page. It will be difficult for a single page website to display more necessary content should a visitor need to know more about a product, idea, or piece of content featured on the site. For a visitor who would want to see particular information on the website, this lack of relevant content can be frustrating. The metadata of a single page website would be an additional consideration.

A single page website only needs one title tag and one description because it only has one set of metadata. The website can only create one title tag because there are no other pages on it. As you only have one chance to capture their attention, this lessens your chances of attracting visitors to your website.

This restricts how much specialized content the website can have or display. On the other hand, a multipage website can include metadata for all of the different web pages that it has, increasing the amount of specialized content it may wish the online user to have access to.

Advanced SEO practices

Multi-page websites can divide their web pages into parts (categories) and subsections to better show content in addition to the ability to create more specific content. These subcategories or subsections can be other pages on the website, which can be further broken down into more subsections. This enables the display of all relevant data regarding an item, product, or idea. To provide the visitors or web users with as much information as possible, this is done.

This process is called ‘siloing’ which is considerably simpler to do on a multipage website than it is on a single page website. If there are several topics to cover or other content to display, it will be challenging for a single page website to display as much content on a particular topic. The one-page website will get clogged and disorganized.

Loading time

When a website only has one page and includes flash videos, images, texts, parallax effects, and other information, the page might become heavy and load more slowly than a website with multiple pages. Visitors and web users who do not have the patience to wait for the entire website to load on a single web page might be turned off by this.

As one of their criteria in ranking websites, SEO will not rank websites that take a long time to load highly on their search engines. Contrarily, a multipage webpage can load much more quickly because the information is dispersed over multiple pages. On-page optimization is crucial since in the world of SEO, loading speed plays a significant role in ranking.

Lack of Links

SEO favors websites with adequate internal and external links. As there is only one webpage for a single page website, there are limits on how many internal links can be added. The only ability of these links is to jump to another section of the same page. With a single page website, it is impossible to link to another page. Since this could quickly take the visitor away from their website, single page websites also frown against having external links.

This drawback does not apply to multi-page websites because they can have a large number of internal links because they are not constrained by the number of pages they have. Additionally, having external links improves the SEO ranking of the site.

Single page websites do have a place in the market, even though they can be spotty and are currently popular, but it’s vital to realize that they are not the best for SEO. When choosing a single page website, much consideration should be given. Considerations should be made for factors like the target demographic, the market, and the need of the website.

Since most online visitors rarely explore past the first or second search result page, businesses aim to rank highly in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). This implies that your online presence might not be felt if you don’t rank well in the SERPs.

Tips for Optimizing a Single Page Website

 

Single Page Website is Good For SEO

We’ve now discussed the benefits and drawbacks of running a single-page website (in terms of SEO).

Here are our top SEO suggestions for creating and running a single-page website, if that’s the best option for you right now.

Use a clear hierarchy

Single page websites often lack the clear architecture that navigation menus and breadcrumbs provide.

In light of this, you should set a clear on-page hierarchy for your content. A good place to start is with a logical heading structure that uses an H1 for the main heading and H2s and H3s for the subheadings.

Users can more easily scan and browse the page if you use these header tags to break up your content in a sensible sequence. When navigating the website, having a messy heading structure forces the user to comprehend the page layout.

Avoid skipping any heading levels (such as nesting an H4 immediately under an H2) as this is especially critical for users who are visually impaired and may be using a screen reader.

Don’t overlook image optimization

In SEO, image optimization is often disregarded. Image SEO should not be overlooked given how many images single-page websites have on average.

Single-page websites are subject to the same rules as other websites, so make sure to follow best practices such as:

      • Using next-gen file types and compressing image file sizes
      • Using descriptive file names and alt text.
      • Loading images via a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

Following these best practices will improve page speed as well as potential rankings via image searches.

Don’t neglect page speed

This brings us nicely to our next piece of advice: don’t ignore page speed. Make sure it loads quickly and is responsive because that will be the only page your users will access.

Page speed isn’t the main priority for SEO, despite the fact that there are hundreds of ranking factors in use. However, it’s difficult to deny that having a quick and responsive website promotes both user experience and organic rankings.

According to Think with Google, if a mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load, 53% of visits are abandoned.

When you put these points together, you can see why it’s important to keep page speed in mind.

For single-page websites, below-the-fold content that loads slowly should be a major factor. This is due to the fact that you’ll probably be cramming more content than normal onto a single page, which will weigh down page load times.

This implies that any resources that call for scrolling will cause a delay in the initial page load. Instead, as the user scrolls, these resources will load.

Double down on link building

Single-page websites have trouble pulling backlinks naturally. With this in mind, link building will probably require even more of your time than usual.

You’ll need to double down on strategies that don’t involve adding new pages.

This is due to the fact that you are unable to launch pages specifically designed to attract links, for instance, utilizing strategies like link baiting.

Follow on-page best practices

Our final piece of advice is really straightforward, but it’s also arguably one of the most important. It’s essential to adhere to on-page SEO best practices.

The limitations of having only one page will prevent you from doing some things, such as internal linking.

With that being said, it is still crucial to optimize key on-page elements, from keyword targeting to meta titles and meta descriptions.

Final Thoughts

Single-page websites aren’t for everybody. We personally will choose a multi-page setup in the majority of situations.

Nevertheless, there are situations in which a single-page website makes sense, especially as a temporary fix or MVP version of a website.

You can get in touch with us if you’re looking for an affordable SEO company in Kolkata.

Understand How Search Engines Crawl and Index Your Website – Discover It Now!

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the practice of boosting the quantity and quality of traffic that lands on your website.
Nevertheless, do you know without “crawl and index” it is not possible to do so?

In other words, SEO is the process of optimizing the web pages to “organically” achieve higher search rankings by using mechanisms that can systematically browse the World Wide Web for crawling and indexing millions of webpages and websites.

Now if you have never wondered what makes a search engine go around, let us have a close look at the primary function of crawling and indexing that helps in delivering optimal search results.

What Is Web Crawling

 

Web Crawling
Source: Google

To explain it simply, crawling is the process that is performed by search engines where it uses web crawlers to find any new website, page link, landing page, or any alterations to current data, broken links, and many more. These web crawlers are also known as “bots” or just “spiders”.
Technically when the spiders visit any website, they follow the internal links through which they can land on other pages of the website.
Hence creating a sitemap (that contains a vital list of URLs) is one of the main reasons which help make it easier for the Google bots to crawl the website.

In other words, whenever the spider crawls the web pages or the website, it goes through the DOM (Document Object Model) that represents the logical tree structure of the website.

Technically speaking, DOM is the rendered JavaScript and HTML code of the pages in the website. Now as it is nearly impossible for the web engines to crawl the entire website at once, hence the bots crawl on the important parts of the website which are significant for measuring individual statistics that can help in raking the websites.

How To Optimize Website For Google Crawler

At times we come across specific instances wherein you might find that the Google crawler is not crawling various crucial pages of the website.
In these scenarios, it becomes necessary to tell the search engine how to crawl that specific website.

To do this create and place “robots.txt” files and place them in the root directory of the domain.

Robots.txt are files that help the crawlers to crawl the website in a systematic manner. This implies that the robots.txt file helps the crawler bot to understand which pages are needed to be crawled.

This also helps in maintaining the Crawl Budget of the website.

Key Elements That Affect The Crawl

A spider does not crawl the content if it is placed behind the login form in a webpage, or if any page needs the user to log in, as such pages are considered secured pages by the bot.

The bot does not crawl the search box info present on the website. Especially for e-commerce websites. Although most people think that when a user enters the product of their liking in the search box, they get crawled by the bot.

There is no guarantee that the bot will crawl media forms like audio, videos, and images. Hence it is advised to add the text of those embedded elements (as image names) in HTML.

Manifestations of webpages for any particular visitor where the pages are shown to the spider different from the users are blocked to the search engine bots.

Many a time the search engine crawlers detect a link to enter your web pages from other websites. However, in such a case the bot also requires the link on your website to navigate various other external landing pages.

Now, pages that do not have internal links assigned to them are known as “Orphan Pages”, and so they remain next to invisible to the spiders while crawling the website.

Crawlers of all search engines get frustrated and leave the pages when they stumble upon “crawl errors” on the website. For instance, errors like 404, 500, etc. Hence it is advised to either temporarily redirect the faulty webpages by performing 302 (redirect) or 301 (permanent redirect) to place a bridge for search engine bots and allow them to crawl appropriately.

Here is a list of names of a few of the most talked-about “Web Crawlers” which include:

  • Google Bot
  • Bing Bot
  • Slurp Bot
  • Baidu Spider
  • Yandex Bot

What Is Web Indexing

 

Web Indexing
Source: Google

Now that we know what is Crawling, let us understand the meaning of Indexing a website.
Simply speaking as the word reveals, “index” is the compilation of all the info of the pages crawled by the search engines.

Hence indexing is the process of archiving the gathered information in the search index database, whereby the indexed data is compared with the previously stored data with complex SEO metrics and algorithms with similar pages, which helps in the process of ranking a website.

How Can You Perceive What the Search Engine Has Indexed?

Let us take into account the most popular of all search engines on this planet – Google.

Just type “site: your domain” in Google’s search box to check how many pages are indexed in the Google SERP.

Performing this search will show all the pages the search engine has indexed which include pages, posts, images, Instagram, and more.

Now, the best means to make URLs indexed is to submit the website’s site map in the Google Search Console, where all the vital pages are listed on the map.

Website indexing plays a major role while displaying all the vital pages on the SERP.

This means that suppose any content is not visible to the Google bot, the page will not be indexable.

In reality, the Google bot visualizes the web pages in a completely different way. It sees them in different formats like CSS, HTML, and JavaScript and so the components which are not accessible do not get indexed by the search engine.

How Does the Search Engine Decide What to Index?

When any user types a query, the search engine attempts to find the most pertinent answer from its already crawled pages in its database.
For instance, Google indexes the content on the web pages according to its defined algorithms, which are updated and modified at a regular interval.
Now, any search engine usually indexes the fresh and new content on the websites, which search engines like Google believes will improve the user experience.

Therefore, the better and more unique the content, the higher ranking Google renders for the webpage as it proves better for SEO.

Tips- Takeaway

As one of the best SEO company in Kolkata, we suggest you can even try using a web crawler app to get a better idea of how a search engine crawls your website.

There are several web crawlers available in the marketplace.
For instance, Screaming Frog is one of the most easy-to-use applications, that has a great interface and allows crawling up to 500 pages for free.

Apart from it, you can also use Sitebulb or Xenu’s Link Sleuth which are also excellent tools and can quickly crawl robust websites and check their status codes or find which pages link to which other pages on the website.

Our dynamic team at SB Infowaves is growing every day with their skills in digital marketing for delivering high-octane solutions to all our clients under a single umbrella at affordable prices.

If you have liked the article, leave your comment below.

A Review On The Use Of AI For Optimizing Digital Marketing Skills

AI or Artificial Intelligence in 2022 is already transforming the face of sales and digital marketing as we know it. This is because, AI can not only speed up and optimize several aspects in marketing, but it can even help boost customer experience and thereby improve conversions.

Hence as one of the best performance marketing agency in India, we are sure that if you are involved in any sort of enterprise marketing, there is a fair chance that you are already using certain types of AI-powered solutions in your Martech stack.

Yet there are several marketers who do not understand the advantages of ML (Machine Learning) and AI over outmoded “non-intelligent” marketing software.

Therefore, if you are not on the bandwagon yet or just thinking of dipping your toes in the water here are certain ways AI as a bleeding-edge technological advancement is helping digital marketers nowadays as illustrated in this article below:

Enhanced Personalization and Recommendations

Enhanced Personalization and Recommendations

In the present times, the way consumers across the globe are interacting or responding to marketing messages are changing at a fast pace, since marketing methods like direct mail and media marketing are no longer prevalent or are effective as they once were in the past.

One reason behind this shifting concept is that today’s consumers expect their preferred brands to send them tailored messages in line with their demography, location, or interests.

In a report published by Accenture, it has been found that more than 40 percent of consumers switch brands due to a dearth of trust and poor personalized marketing, and more than 43 percent of consumers are likely to make purchases from organizations that help personalize their customer experience.

Additionally, data from Experian (an Anglo–Irish multinational consumer credit reporting company) shows that emails that have personalized subject lines are 26 percent more likely to be opened pitted against those that are not.

AI is a technology that can predict customer behaviors based on intelligent learning from their previous interactions with a brand, which implies that AI-based software solutions when they are used by marketers can send marketing communications that are more likely to convert that can lead to a sale (at the best possible time) and drive conversions.

For an instance, most of us are already familiar with the tailored recommendations that are offered by sites like Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon, which can be startlingly accurate, particularly for users who have had had an account for several years.

Perse, Amazon uses an intelligent open-source AI framework called DSSTNE (Deep Scalable Sparse Tensor Network Engine), pronounced “Destiny” to improve the deep learning capability of the website.

Hence for offering a hyper-personalized customer experience, in the present times, AI is the only answer for analyzing customer data, using machine learning algorithms that can enable digital marketers to produce optimally personalized content and thereby boost sales and increase conversion in their marketplace.

Dynamic Pricing

Dynamic Pricing

We all know that providing discounts while sales are low, is a surefire way to accelerate sales, since there are many customers who will buy with a smaller discount contrary to if there is no discount at all.

This is over here where AI can come into play and can be used to set the price of any product or service dynamically depending on the customer’s profile, availability, demand, season, popularity, and other factors to maximize both sales and profits of a company.

For instance, if you have ever searched for flight tickets and then gone back to buy them a couple of days later only to find it has gone up or down a few hundred dollars, this can be also a good example of dynamic pricing at work.

Customer Service Chatbots

Customer Service Chatbots

To deal with customer queries and provide 24/7 instant replies several organizations are using intelligent chatbots nowadays that can help reduce the workload of their service agents while providing faster responses to their customers.

Since WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Share Chat, and other similar messaging apps have become a convenient and popular way for customers to contact brands and businesses, ensuring that accounts are constantly staffed with customer service agents can be extremely expensive, especially for SMBs and startups.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms, which is a subset of AI have become incredibly advanced in recent years, making it possible for machines to replace human agents in sales and customer roles.

With virtual assistants like Google Assistant, Siri, Cortana, and Alexa, we are getting more comfortable with chatbots, and in some cases even selecting them over real people.

Interesting, machines never have a bad day and so unlike humans, they can be relied on to be always engaging, polite, and likable.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization

Search algorithms are always improving in every aspect from search engines like Google used by billions of users every day to a small database of product searches on e-commerce websites.

Integrating AI into search strings can not only pick up misspellings and suggest alternatives but can also be influenced to predict in accordance with the user’s past behaviors. This means integrated AI searches can become increasingly sophisticated at working out the searcher’s “intent”.

Additionally, special results such as “Google My Business” and shopping results are also providing the next best user experience for searchers, and voice search is becoming more commonplace as the number of AI-powered devices and assistants is continuing to grow in the digital marketing arena.

Hence in the present-day digital marketers can also use AI nowadays to optimize their content for voice search, which can help to improve site traffic and SEO skills as we move increasingly into a voice-operated digital world.

PPC Ad Optimization

PPC Ad Optimization

Since long, A/B testing is the traditional approach that was used to optimize display ads and marketing messages. However, it is a painstaking process with an infinite number of variables to try out, which in general takes up a lot of time and resources.

Using AI algorithms digital marketers now can automatically and incessantly optimize their ads depending on interactions and conversions made in the past by the customers.

Takeaway- If You Are Not Using AI Yet, You Are Already Falling Behind

While for many marketers advanced AI can seem to be intimidating, nevertheless ignoring the possibilities and benefits of AI in digital marketing means that your brand is sure to fall behind its competitors in a world that is increasingly relying on technology for sustaining business growth.

Therefore, if you have not yet explored the world of AI-powered Martech (when in reality yesterday was the time to do so), we are the SEO expert in Kolkata you can outsource for your business and help make your dreams come true easily.

Cardinal KPIs to Ask from Your SEO Expert in Kolkata

KPIs are the most essential facts and figures that are measurable and so pretty hard to ignore in the first place when you want to know the performance of your website.

How would you know if your website is performance-driven as you ask your SEO expert in Kolkata while tracking the performance of your website?

Now KPIs are essential for any business organization regardless of its size since it provides context to goals and place accountability on the team to achieve these goals.

So, without further ado, since every business in the present times must use digital marketing to expand their reach, let us get started with the important KPIs for three different businesses:

Essential SEO KPIs for Small Businesses

If you are not sure how to measure the performance of your small businesses’ website, here are three critical KPIs to provide you with a true and clear picture of your digital marketing campaigns:

Cost Per Acquistion (CPA)

You have hired the best digital marketing agency in Kolkata, but have you asked them what is the cost of earning a new customer?

Now, this is an extremely important question, as CPA is an important SEO metric that can help any business to understand the actual cost of acquiring a new customer which can be acquired through each lead and click, rather than looking at the conversions and total customers.

CPA is a metric that you can extend to benchmark whether an email initiative, Facebook campaign, or a whitepaper uploaded was worth its time and investment.

Understanding CPA can not only help businesses to better plan their marketing efforts but also avoid wasteful expenditures or leave money on the table.

CPA is calculated by dividing the total cost of conversions by the total number of conversions.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

Another picture of your cost-benefiting equation that SEO can provide is your brand’s Customer Lifetime Value, which may indicate what your company can expect from an average customer in terms of revenue.

Using CLTV you can easily find the exact revenue that each customer might bring to your business.

In a broader sense, CLTV is a metric that can help understand the ROI of your marketing efforts and how effective your organization is at retaining customers.

Knowing CLTV helps businesses to better allocate their resources for finding sustainable growth.
CLTV is calculated by finding the average purchase value and thereafter multiplying that number by the average number of purchases to determine customer value.

Time for Return on Investment (ROI)

When we do digital marketing, all of us want to see results quickly. Hence, the third essential KPI is measuring the time it takes for your business to see positive results after you have invested in hiring the best SEO company in Kolkata.

Now it must be understood that if you plan to go for inbound marketing, you might not witness immediate results, so remember successful digital marketing strategies take time.

However, if you are tempted to see more immediate results you can invest in PPC campaigns for your business.

Essential SEO KPIs for Medium-sized Businesses

Apart from the above-stated KPIs if you are an owner of a medium-sized business here are some more KPIs that you must monitor for optimal evaluation of your SEO endeavors to find an effective picture of your digital marketing campaigns.

Click-Through Rate(CTR)

The CTR of your business website represents the relevance and creative nature of your content. It is a metric that affects your brand’s customer acquisition rate and so an increase in CTR would automatically lower the rate of CPC.

Any business that wants to increase its online ROI must know its CTR since it provides a clear idea of what to show in the first place. For example, a catchy subject line for your email campaigns or banner ads and affiliated deals can bring a massive improvement in your CTR.

Distribution of Page Depth

Have you ever inquired about the distribution of page depth of your website from your SEO expert in Kolkata?
This metric is important since the distribution of page depth represents the percentage of visitors who browse more than just the home page of your website.

Viewing this metric in detail can provide a lens for finding the way your content is consumed and help categorize visits into flirts, browsers, abandoners, and loyalists.

Additionally, if you are running a content-only website, visiting more pages signifies more impressions that can influence conversion and sales.

Essential SEO KPIs for E-Commerce Websites

Finally, there can be a plethora of KPIs for e-commerce websites. However, tracking the right ones absolutely depends on the specific need of your business. Therefore, check out these website performance metrics which are the basic things that you need to consider for measuring the performance of all e-commerce business websites.

Conversion Rate

It is a common truth that knowing your buyer persona would help you improve the performance of your brand and lure more visitors into the sales funnel.

Hence a high conversion rate is imperative that you are convincing your audience at large.

Nevertheless, here are a few questions we would advise you to ask yourself while increasing your conversion rate:

What are the easy ways to quicker conversion?

What is the average conversion rate in my industry?

Are pricey products the reason for my low conversion rate?

How happy are my customers buying from the website?

After you find answers to these questions you can further improve the path of purchase and thereby further boost the conversion rate.

Cart Abandonment Rate

This refers to the percentage of your online shoppers who added items to their shopping carts but never actually purchased.

Now even though this has nothing much to do with your e-commerce website’s SEO, nevertheless as shoppers tend to abandon their cart due to excessive cost of shipping, cost of the product, or even user errors in the website or complicated checkout requirements processes. So if you measure this metric and resolve these issues it might work on reducing customer churn in the long run.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate indicates the percentage of visitors who leave your e-commerce website after arriving from a referral source.

A high bounce rate may indicate the presence of irrelevant content on your website or the use of unrelated keywords. Therefore, consider using longtail keywords in your SEO strategy to reduce the bounce.

Cost Per Conversion(CPC)

CPC is the amount that a business pays to convert visitors to a buyer. Measuring this metric helps to better understand what to pay for your online ads, price your products, and how to market your commodities and services online.

For example, if you run a PPC ad that pays 10 cents per click, and on average your business needs 20 clicks before conversion. Your CPC averages $2.00. This implies your business only earns a profit if the purchase is beyond $ 2.00.

Hence CPC is an important metric that you need to consider to make real profits once you set up an ad campaign and want to make a profit out of it for your business.

Take away

Even though it is difficult to track the performance of any website, nevertheless checking and measuring these above-stated KPIs might help to monitor your website’s performance effectively and thereby optimize your website and set up realistic business goals.

Hope you found this article helpful. For more updates, you can contact us to avail the most experienced SEO expert in Kolkata.

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