I would have thought that the subject of Doorway Pages
(Entry Pages, Gateway Pages, etc.) had been exhaustively explored by now, but
we tend to forget that there are new users coming on the internet daily, and
there hasn't been much coverage on the topic recently.
There are many
design and development tools (free or otherwise) available for the new
webmaster, so almost anyone can build a website, but they face the same
age-old problem of trying to find ways to get their new site noticed (and the
longer it takes, the more frantic they get).
We all go
through the same learning curve. We read or hear about various promotion
techniques. We get advice on Search Engine Optimization, Opt-in Lists,
Safe Lists, E-zine advertising, and the list goes on. There is a wealth
of information on the web, but there is probably just as much, or more,
misinformation. Not only can the important information change rapidly,
but it is awfully easy to stumble across archived information, or a free eBook
- and not realize
that it is outdated.
Anyway, a reader recently asked
me about the usefulness of Doorway Pages to increase their rankings in the
search engines. It will soon become obvious what my short answer would
have been, but I don't normally just accept someone else's opinion without an
explanation. I hope you are the same way.
Doorway
pages were first developed as a means to create a page that was optimized for
a particular search engine in order to achieve a higher ranking. Because
search engines used different algorithms for ranking web sites, it had become
impossible to optimize a single page to meet the ranking criteria of all of
them. You could get a page ranked high on one search engine and watch
your rankings plummet on another.
The answer?
Create multiple (Doorway) pages - each optimized for a single, major search
engine, and have each of them link, redirect, or forward to the actual web
page you wanted to promote, and then submit that page to that particular
search engine - instead of the actual web page your viewer will ultimately
see. While it was a little extra work to create 6,7, or even a dozen or
more Doorway pages - the general consensus was that the ranking results in
the targeted search engines made it all worthwhile.
The
problem with this...
As with every good technique, tip, or trick - some overzealous (and that's
being kind) "marketers" (and that's being liberal) will find a way
to abuse it. Just as some people will put popular search terms in their
keywords Meta Tag regardless of whether those terms have any relevance to the
web page being submitted, they also began spamming the search engines with
Doorway pages.
Now, understand that the
search engines gain their competitive edge by being able to deliver more
relevant results to any set of search terms. It is their business
purpose, their entire reason for existing. The better they are at doing
this, the more popular their service becomes over their competition, and the
more successful they will be. They will combat anyone or anything that interferes
with their ability to deliver their product or service (wouldn't
you?).
Doorway pages are viewed by the
search engines as an attempt to manipulate them and their service. How
can they possibly differentiate their service from the competition if they
allow their "supplier" (web masters) to dictate what they will
deliver to their "customer" (web surfers)? It didn't take long
for the major search engines to learn to identify Doorway pages, and their
overwhelming response has been to:
- downgrade the results attained through the use of those
pages,
- refuse to list those pages, or
- ban the site from listing on their service altogether
I could have written this article just based on the regular
reading I do, but then I would have just been passing on someone else's
opinion. In order to respond to my reader with absolute confidence, I
first researched over 3 years of articles from a myriad of sources. From
those it was easy to see the trend build, and then come into disfavor.
Finally, I went to the search engines themselves to read their current
policies and guidelines. Some mention Doorway pages specifically, but
even those that require a little interpretation are pretty easy to
understand.
The major search engines disapprove of methods that present
different content to their spiders than the content that is ultimately
presented to the viewer. For your own edification, here are just a few
of the listings I found, with snippets from their guidelines:
From Google: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't
deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you
display to users.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other
"cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or
no original content.
From AltaVista: http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/new#rls
Pages that duplicate content, either by excessive submission of the same page,
submitting the same pages from multiple domains, or submitting the same
content from multiple hosts
Pages that are machine-generated with minimal or no content, whose sole
purpose is to get a user to click to another page
Pages that contain only links to other pages
From AllTheWeb: http://www.alltheweb.com/info/about/spam_policy.html
exclude Page Spam documents from our index or at least disregard links from it
when computing static rank
The Alternative:
If your keyword phrases are relevant to your site content,
then it follows that the content will naturally include those relevant keyword
phrases. If not, then you need to either rethink that content and its
presentation - or rethink your choice of keyword phrases. It's really
that simple. Each page of your site can and should have its own topic
and its own set of relevant keyword phrases. Make sure that every page
of your site contains a Title, a Meta description, and Meta keywords (again
those keyword phrases that are relevant to that page).
Then when you submit your "home" page to a search
engine, it can spider your entire site through your linked pages, picking up
all that Meta information so that each page gets listed properly. In a
sense, every page on your site becomes sort of a "Doorway" to the
rest of the site. Concentrate on building content,
and give the engines just what they want to see anyway: relevant content.
When submitting your web site to
directories, submit each page you want listed (with the relevant search terms
for that page).
Then of course, it is a matter of sitting back and waiting
unless you opt for one of the "express" listing services or
"pay-per-click" placement - but those are separate topics, deserving
of their own articles. With straight submission, it will take some time
for your site to even get listed, but once you're there you can get very
targeted traffic for a very long time to come.
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