One page listing every service, or a page per service

Every article on this question is written by a web design agency and every one reaches the same conclusion: a page per service. They are mostly right, and the advice is incomplete in a way that costs people money.

Because the failure you should actually be worried about is not having one page. It is splitting one page into nine thin ones.

Why the standard advice is right

A page about one thing can be matched to searches about that thing. A page about nine things is a weaker match for all nine, because most of it is about something else.

It is also better for the reader. Someone searching for one specific service does not want to scroll past eight others to find two sentences about theirs, and the two sentences are all a combined page has room for.

The failure nobody mentions

You take a 900 word services page covering nine services and split it into nine pages of 100 words each.

You now have nine pages that say almost nothing, that are structurally near-identical to each other, and that Google will frequently decline to index beyond the first one or two. The combined page at least had substance. The split version has nine pages of scaffolding.

The test

Three questions per service. All three have to be yes.

1. 01Do people search for this by name, separately from your other services? A plumber's customers search for blocked drains and for hot water separately. They do not search for tap washer replacement.
2. 02Can you write 400 or more genuinely useful words about it? What it involves, what it costs, how long it takes, what goes wrong, what to do before you arrive. If you cannot get past 150, you do not have a page.
3. 03Would you be happy for it to be someone's first impression of your business? Because a page that ranks is an entry point, not a subsection.

Everything that passes all three gets a page. Everything else stays as a section on a combined page, and that is a perfectly good outcome rather than a compromise.

Three cases where one page is the right answer

1. The services are the same purchase

If a customer who wants one would happily buy any of them, and nobody searches for them separately, they are one page. Variations on a treatment, sizes of the same job, materials for the same product.

2. You genuinely cannot maintain the pages

This is a real constraint and it is treated as an excuse everywhere else. Nine pages have to be kept accurate as prices, processes and services change. A business that will realistically update one page and not nine is better off with the one that is right than the nine that go stale.

Stale pages are not neutral. A page quoting a price you no longer charge costs you the enquiry it produces.

3. It is a service you do not want more of

Things you do as a favour to existing customers, or that you would rather not be known for. Leave those as a line on the combined page. A page ranks, and ranking for work you do not want is a cost.

Doing the split properly

1. 01Start with the service that makes you the most money, not the one that is easiest to write.
2. 02Write it fully before starting the next. One good page beats four half-finished ones.
3. 03Keep the combined page as a hub, linking to each new page in a sentence saying what it covers.
4. 04Link between related service pages where it genuinely helps a reader.
5. 05Add each new service to your profile's services list as its page goes up, so the listing and the site say the same thing.
6. 06Do not delete the old page or change its URL. If it must go, redirect it to its closest equivalent rather than the homepage.
7. 07Do one a month. There is no prize for finishing in a fortnight, and there is a penalty for nine thin pages.

Four substantial service pages beat nine hollow ones, and they beat one page covering everything. In that order.

The same logic applies to location pages and it goes wrong there more often, which is covered in location pages that are not thin. Once the pages exist they need to link to each other, which is internal linking, and the wider picture is on our on-page page.