TL;DR
- Yes, SEO can work for one-page websites, but only in low-competition or underserved niches.
- Off-site SEO (backlinks) is the most important ranking factor for one-page sites.
- On-page SEO still matters, but you must focus on a small set of clearly defined keywords.
- One-page websites can rank quickly, but they have limited scalability compared to multi-page sites.
- In practice, strong backlinks and clear search intent can outperform site size.
The Reality of SEO for One-Page Websites
Yes, SEO for one-page websites can work, but only under certain conditions.
- You need to be in a low-competition niche, preferably in local SEO.
- You need to have a strong backlink profile.
- You need to structure your page to target specific keywords.
Below, we break down each of these conditions and explain why they matter for one-page websites.
Why Off-Site SEO Is Most Important for One-Page Websites
Build backlinks, build backlinks, build backlinks. I cannot stress this enough. As a one-page website, your goal is to get as much traffic to that page as possible. To achieve this, you must get ranked for long-tail queries in addition to the main keywords you will target. To get ranked for long-tail queries, you must have a high domain authority so Google can expand your reach.
The best types of backlinks you can build are:
Partnerships
For example, if you are a car mechanic and you know the owner of a car dealership, talk with them and create a partnerships section in your footer. You can then add dofollow links or add new sections at the bottom of your site. If they have a blog, that's great. If not, and they are also a one-page site, the footer is usually the best option.
Help a Reporter Out
Go to https://www.helpareporter.com and sign up. You will receive daily inquiries from reporters, and if they pertain to your niche, answer them without the use of AI.
Guest Blogging
Write a blog as a guest on another person's blog, and in exchange, you get a backlink. At the start, any blog that is in your niche and covers your niche will help immensely, especially in terms of local SEO, where domain ratings are usually extremely low.
Why On-Page SEO Also Matters
The classics matter. You must do keyword research and see which keywords you can target. If you are a service-based business, such as a car mechanic, one example could be "car mechanic + your city." In the last section, we show how we have done this for Sarajevo.
Add it to your:
- H1
- Page title
- Meta description
- And naturally throughout your text
Furthermore, we recommend putting your services as separate H2 tags.
What Worked in Our One-Page SEO Projects
We have many local SEO clients based in Sarajevo. After keyword and SERP analysis, we realized that "car mechanic" in Bosnian is wide open, with a monthly search volume of 500+.
We followed all the steps above, and we currently rank two of our clients in positions 3 and 4 for this query with a one-page website.
Omescentar.com ranked in about two months naturally because of search intent and the backlinks we built. After realizing this, we did the same thing in about two hours for zebax.ba, and within eight hours, it reached position four.
They are not number one because the SERP is dominated by Sarajevo's biggest car mechanic, which has a domain that is over 10 years old. However, with enough backlinks, this position can be challenged. The second position is currently held by a directory.
Keep in mind that the number of backlinks we built to these sites was two. Yes, two: one from hvteq.com and one from blogteq.com.
It took us three hours in total, and we generated 488 visitors from Google, Bing, and ChatGPT over the last three months across both sites combined. If we assume a 10% conversion rate, that's roughly 40 new customers from three hours of work.
Build backlinks!