Upgrading: The One-Page Website That Blocks Google

Yesterday I started re-programming a site with a huge amount of immensely rich business content related to a very specific trade. I am part owner of this trade magazine (paper format) and the reason why I was interested in investing is the excellent quality of the writing. The Editor-in-Chief wants to start publishing exclusive Web content on a monthly basis that will not be available in the printed version of the magazine. There are many other functionalities that we want to add in the future as well.

The website is under-used, because of a host of issues.

The original programmer thought it would be cool to make this a one-page website. Moreover, all the links are served in POST method. This method of programming was somehow thought to be elegant a few years back. What this means is that all content is encapsulated in the home.php page therefore only that page can be indexed by Google. Some agents are blocked by the redirect in the index.php page. The front page content changes on a weekly basis, browsers who find useful info in Google click-through to a news page that has changed and can’t find the info they were looking for. The website benefits from frequent visits by hundreds of readers, but based on the paper magazine readership (over 5,000 copies in corporate offices), it should be so much more.

I have detailed statistics from Google Analytics for the past few months so that I can show you the results a few months down the road based on a very specific series of changes and improvements.

Is your website underused? It may not be your fault. Certain small details can affect your ranking and undermine the effort you put into your content.