Ranking a one page website?

Hi to all,

Each webpage has its own chance to rank well in the SERP's, how about if you have a one page website well onsite optimized, with specific target keyphrases in mind?
Are your chances significantly less to rank for those keyphrases than if you had let s say a ten pages website?

I heard from some people than a website of less than 10 pages could not be optimized, is there such a rule???

Bottom line is, if i optimize my page better for "special green widgets' is it gonna appear higher in SERP's than a ten page website optimized for the related keywords? Is having more pages on the site a big advantage?

I have repeated myself but i hope my concern is now clear to everyone. Thanks in advance for your opinions.

One thing you should remember when optimising a website is that Google loves (unique) content. The more the better!

More content in turn means more pages, allowing the chance for some decent targeted internal linking. For instance with special green widgets, have various internal pages concentrating on different keyphrases related to special green widgets, all linking back to the home page with the keyphrase "special green widgets".

Another way to look at it is that Google will see a multiple page website giving information on all aspects of special green widgets as much more of an authority on the subject than a one page website.

justsearchltd's comments aside, there is no penalty for just having a homepage and no internal pages, AFAIK.
You usually should target one keyword (or a few, if it's necessary or appropriate) on one page. Having several pages target exactly the same keyword is not very sensible, IMHO. It's better to target entirely different keyphrases or the same main keyword with different additions on several pages.
For example, your homepage could target 'gardening' and different internal pages could target cover the topics 'gardening tools', 'local gardening clubs', 'popular garden flowers', and so on.

justsearchltd's comments aside? You just said exactly what they said.

I just noticed a glitch in the matrix, woah... dude.

[QUOTE=Chris42]justsearchltd's comments aside, there is no penalty for just having a homepage and no internal pages[QUOTE]

Agreed but i imagine it would be a lot harder as you would have to earn your "trust" with google another way, which is very difficault seeing as you cannot attract a wider range of links with just one page targeting one or two keywords.

More content means more exposure, not just to the SE but also visitors/webmasters who may link back to your page because it is relevant to theirs.

Thanks for the comments, i am not disputing the fact that more pages will ease the rankings and number of visits on a website.

Keep in mind that the one page would be targeted specifically to one or two keyphrases.

I take good note of the internal link issue, this IS probably where it hurts to have only one page site. Because i don't see anywhere else.
In terms of content, if the one page is perfectly optimized and full of content related to the keyphrases targeted, i don't see where would be the problem or the advantage of having 20 pages that talk about the same topic.

Plus, this therory of 10 pages minimum to rank well in SERPs are B*****, would you guys confirm?

I wouldn't say that it's total BS. Generally speaking, large and content-rich sites tend to do better in the SERPs.

Saying that, my my website http://www. samuicomputers.com is a one page website and is number 12 on Google for "SEO Thailand" - our top keyword. If you type in "Koh Samui SEO", we are number one - its not a very competitive term I know.

The way we got our one page site up there is getting links...

Hi,

Its all about how well you can optimise your site for your targeted keyword, I have seen sites having a single webpage and having good page rank. Do make good use of meta tags, and all other important steps of SEO. Sure you will make it.

Regards,

Bhumi

IMO the only disadvantage in having to optimize a "one-page" website is that you can't target more than 2 - 3 moderately competitive keywords/ keyphrases.

If you maintain proper on-page and off-page optimization, have strong backlinks from relevant sites, then no reason why you can't outrank any other 100 page website with your one-page site.

After all we optimize page-by-page.

I personally think optimizing one pages website it more time consuming; may any other may not agree on this. Here I and my friend from Russia; have try 3 website which have only one page.

Here I agree with pro_seo most disadvantage is can only target 2-3 keywords. Here it will be hard to achieve trust of all major search engine and as well as customer too. In all one page website we optimize before 2 years and at that period also it took longer period to achieve rank well in all major SE. Main problem we face for this type of website was stability in all major SE (G, Y!, MSN). For this website when it rank well in Google we found drastic rank drop in Yahoo and MSN or visa-versa; some basic assumption is that after 2 years many thing are change and as well as competition also increased a lot.

This is website was we were facing problem was it was product selling websites and don’t have more content in it; so hope your website may have unique contents….

For this website we have just followed a basic seo practice.

Thanks a lot for all your opinions. I have myself already optimized a couple of one page websites, and found that some of them are still in the Google sandbox for almost a month now for the most popular keyword... it might take longer indeed. If i get good results i will keep updating this thread. Thanks again!

I have a one-page site optimized for a keyword with about 2.5 million google results. I have been rank 1 or 2 for the last month and my site is only 6 months old. It is definitely possible to rank well with a 1 page site.

Somehow i am also #2 on msn for 'videos online' with 45 million results =P

thanks a lot for your post, This is what i was looking for. Amazing job on your site (not talking about the design ).