Are you someone who sells products via a 1-page sales letter website? Or perhaps you are (more likely) someone who instantly clicks AWAY from a 1-page sales letter any time you see one?!

Ever wonder if Google penalizes 1-page sales websites?

Wonder no more: Google penalizes one-page landing pages.

I have a 1-page website that sells a back pain elimination product. I found out today that Google does not show it on ANY of it's search engine results. It does not index the website at all.

Now, let's be clear, you may look at the website, and say, "Yuck. I'm glad google doesn't show me your crappy website, Ryan." Fair enough. We can still be friends.

But I don't think google has your best interests in mind when it dropped my site from its index. They are mainly looking after their own interests. I'll tell you why in just a moment.

First, take a look at the website. It used to get a substantial amount of free traffic from google: Ryan's U-G-L-Y Sales Letter:xbackpain.com. It is one my earliest and most primitive sales pages, and yes, it's in serious need of an upgrade

But why does google no longer index the website?

Would google not index it, simply because it is not pretty? I don't think so.

Does Google consider it a spam website? Again, I don't think so. It has been up for over a year, and it has plenty of content and incoming links from other websites and articles.

However, Google prides itself on being a search engine that focuses on user-experience and websites that have high informational value. Thus, Wikipedia, University websites and websites with a great deal of content tend to get higher rankings. But that would be a reason to give my site a lower ranking not drop it from the rankings altogether.

So why does the website not appear in Google's rankings?

The website is designed to sell a product and google feels that I should PAY for the privilege of getting traffic. By not-indexing my website, I am forced to use Google's Pay-Per-Click system if I want them to send me traffic.

However, all is not lost and there are some ways to get re-indexed. (And some ways to avoid getting banned from the search results in the first place). Here are a couple of things that I will do and that you may want to consider, if you have a 1-page sales letter website:

1. Add some outgoing links to websites owned by other people and related to the topic.

2. Add some additonal informational pages about the website's topic.

3. Add a blog about the topic.

4. Add a forum.

All of these options will should only take an hour or so to add - keeping you in the index, and in my case (I hope) adding me back in!