Making a single-page blog work with search engines

Question

I am trying to create a blog with all full posts on a single page. Ideally, this would even be a static HTML page.

The big problem is linking to these posts, especially for search engines. I do not want to create separate pages for each post. So with all on one page, I can only use URL hashes like /index.html#post-title to link to specific posts, right?

However, it seems like search engines ignore these hashes and therefore can't link to or index specific posts. Which obviously sucks for a blog.

So, any ideas on how I could solve that? I thought about making separate pages for each post while making it look like they are all the same page - but I would prefer a cleaner way.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 31 '13 at 17:40

This set up will create a problem for SEO.

There will be only one page indexed. So when a user is looking for post 546 he will have to do a lot of scrolling.

You will also have a hard time ranking a single page for a bunch of words in comparison to ranking each post for its topic.

Thus, my favourite solution to this problem is to have each post on its own url, and put the content on the main page via AJAX!

This will give you the same experience as if all was on one page, but will deliver different landing pages for google.

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:31

0

Rather than just using a "#", use "#!" (a "hash-bang"). Then the engines will index your pages.

See more on the answer with 12 upvotes in this topic: Doing links like Twitter, Hash-Bang #! URL's

Edit: Also see: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started

edited May 23 '17 at 10:31

Community

1
1

answered Jul 31 '13 at 17:40

Jackson

9,188
6
52
77

hashbangs are not considered best practice any longer. – user1721135 Jul 31 '13 at 17:42

dglickler · Answer 3 · 2013-07-31T18:54:36.383

You might want to read up on these pages:

http://www.seo-gold.com/seo-tutorial/anchor-text-optimization

http://www.launchdigitalmarketing.com/seo-tips/seo-content-writing

When you create your anchor text for the in-page links, how descriptive is the link? Is it a decent phrase (considering phrases are more useful than single words?) How do you separate the words (by _ or - or spaces?)

I, personally, am not a big fan of single page blogs, partly for that, and partly for readability's sake...but when you want to stick with the single page, try using images and giving them both alt-tags and title-tags that match what you'd want the anchor text to be. If the page isn't catching the anchor's text for SEO, it might grab from the photo, and cover that base.

Just one work-around available to you.

score -1 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 31 '13 at 17:41

-1

The best way (that I can think of) to do this would be in PHP. This is pretty much the only way you would be able to pull this tactic off. It would result like page.php?post=4698264

In which everything is dependant on that post number.

answered Jul 31 '13 at 17:41

pedrum golriz

513
8
27

how is that a solution? in this setup each post is still on a different page. – user1721135 Jul 31 '13 at 17:49
How do you figure? The location of the page is always the same. The only thing you would be changing is the content. – pedrum golriz Jul 31 '13 at 17:52
i think the question is how to achieve the user experience of a single page, not how to have a single file. – user1721135 Jul 31 '13 at 17:54

Making a single-page blog work with search engines

4 Answers4