Why Sites with More than 1 Page are Usually Way Better

Why are sites with more than 1 page usually so much better than people seem to think?

In a word:  SEO – aka – Search Engine Optimization.

Single page websites with fancy scrolling tools and sliders have become all the rage.  Certain “experts” are advising their clients that if they want to be successful in the 21st century, they need to use a single page site, rather than the “old-fashioned” sites with more than 1 page.

But this kind of advice could kill your SEO and thus your online presence.  In other words, it could take the bottom out of your bottom line!

The reasons are multiple:

1. Single page websites are often way too long.  After all, no matter how you arrange your website, you have to get your
message out in a way that let’s visitors know who you are and what you’re all about.

2. Because of the tendency for a single page website to be long, it will often take way longer to load than sites with more than 1 page.  By the time everything loads, your visitor may already have lost interest. Even worse, a potential visitor may not even see anything but a blank page for too long, especially on a low-bandwidth connection.

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3. Single page websites are just terrible for SEO.  That’s because the search engines are looking for lots of fresh content. You can’t provide that apart from using sites with more than 1 page.  It simply isn’t even a consideration on a single page website.

4. Single page websites make terrible landing pages.  Not only are single page websites terrible for SEO, they are awful as landing pages, even though they are the only page you can land on, because they are the only page of the website.

Landing pages need to pop open immediately with a quick and demanding call-to-action.  You just can’t do that unless you use sites with more than 1 page, because you have to get all your information, including your pitch, your products, your sales page, and your contact information on the same page.

Sites with more than 1 page give you the ability to create a really eye-popping, lightning fast landing page with a very clear call-to-action without even considering any kind of SEO for that page.

In fact, real SEO experts agree that you should not make optimization a priority for landing pages.  Sites with more than 1 page are not restricted by space, creating endless possibility for SEO on each page and post throughout the rest of the site.

Why I wrote this post

Clients have been asking me about doing SEO on their single page websites.  They are worried about PageSpeed Insights, GTMetrix, and Pingdom Web Speed Test, while failing to recognize that it is almost infinitely more important to have a relevant, content-rich website that both real people and the search engines will love – if you want to have a profitable site.

Page speed is important – don’t get me wrong – but that is not what keeps people on your site, nor what brings them back. Content is still king.

But if you try to put all your great content on a single page, it really is going to just kill you on load time! Unless you have a really expensive, high-speed, dedicated server, your page speed is not something you have nearly as much control over as some will tell you.

But even on a slow server, short pages always load way faster than long, long pages. And the faster your landing page loads, the faster your visitor starts to see your great content! To use an angling term, you can’t set the hook before the fish bites!

What do you think?  Let us know in the comment section, below! Remember to leave us a link!