Definition: A doorway page is content created specifically for
purpose of garnering high placements in search engines. Issue: Google makes following specific recommendation: Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content (http://www.google.com/intl/az/webmasters/guidelines.html).
This article addresses issue of doorway pages, proposes an acceptable alternative and offers some insights into basic principles of search engine optimization.
To frame issue of doorway pages it is important to understand why content is so critical to search engine optimization. In order to do this we need to step back and take a look at search engines themselves:
•Google, Yahoo, MSN, and all other search engines want to provide same thing: A prioritized list of links that point to most relevant web sites satisfying users search criteria.
•Relevance is defined as “best content” with “best fit” to user’s search. That’s a search engine’s value – providing efficient access to information a user wants when they want it.
•The search engine that does best job of delivering largest quantity of most relevant results attracts most users.
•Obviously speed, ease-of-use and “marketing” impact popularity but in end quality of results counts most.
The best way for you to get long-term results is by “partnering” with search engines. Partnering means recognizing and supporting value-proposition that search engines provide to their end-users:
•Provide lots of highly relevant content •Follow accepted (i.e. ethical) search engine optimization principles
Is there an alternative? Sure, like many situations there are always short cuts and quick fixes that purport to let you “game system.” Instead of partnering with search providers you compete with them. By “compete” I mean all effort (and dollars) expended to chase their constantly evolving algorithms and artificially increase your site’s rankings. These techniques may get you short-term results but many are considered equivalent of “spamming” and could get your site de-listed. From a search engine providers point of view, anything that gets better results for sites with inferior content (and fit) is compromising their product and is temporary until they tune their algorithm so that it correctly ranks your site (down).
One of these shortcuts is use of “doorway pages.” The rest of this article discusses use of doorway pages and recommends an alternative approach.
What is a doorway page? Doorway pages are pages of content that have been specifically designed to achieve high rankings in search engines. They are often used by websites that don’t have an abundance of content within main pages of their site due to technology issues or design conflicts. They can be an effective tool for garnering short-term placement in search engine rankings when used appropriately, but doorway pages have been abused by websites for many years, to point that they are frowned upon by search engines who now attempt to exclude them from their result pages.
What does a “Doorway Page” look like? A doorway page appears as if it was built specifically to attain high search engine placement, and offers little value to searchers. It often has following characteristics: oA lot of poorly written content, with an abundance of hyperlinked phrases in body text oCopy that is stuffed with lists of keywords oZero (0) in-bound links from other parts of website Example: you build a doorway page named “targeted-keyword.html,” but do not link to this page from any other part of your website. Google assumes no in-bound links exist because this page is of little value, and you want to hide it from regular visitors to its site. oA “redirection” that automatically loads a new page once doorway pages is accessed
