Are Doorway Pages an Effective SEO Technique?
Published November 03, 2008
What are doorway pages? Google's guidelines specify them as:
“…typically large sets of poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. In many cases, doorway pages are written to rank for a particular phrase and then funnel users to a single destination. Whether deployed across many domains or established within one domain, doorway pages tend to frustrate users, and are in violation of our webmaster guidelines.”
How do doorway pages accomplish the funneling of traffic? Doorway pages are often “cloaked,” which is a method used to deliver a version of the doorway page to a visitor that is different from what a web crawler sees. Using the IP address of the visitor, a script can determine whether the visitor is a user browser or a search engine spider. The information delivered to the search engine contains an optimized, keyword-rich “cloaked" doorway page to deceive the search engine (that may end up ranking highly in search engine results), which is different than what users actually see.
Using doorway software and keyword lists, a SEO firm can create hundreds of auto-generated “doorway” pages that are misleading and are a means to funnel traffic to another URL, which usually does not accurately reflect the visitor’s search.
The use of doorway pages is usually considered spam, or “spamdexing,” since they are created specifically for indexing into search engines and web crawlers.
Do doorways help with SEO?
It is best to not use doorways to your website as an SEO tool. An important reason for this avoidance is that if a visitor encounters a doorway page that does not fit their search terms accurately, it is most likely that they will hit their “Back” button and never explore the actual site. Thus, a doorway may generate a number of hits, but very few actual interested users and even fewer, if any, actual sales.
If you want to focus and direct traffic to your website or certain parts of your website, rather than create a doorway, it is better to optimize the targeted landing web pages so that they show up on search results. As an example, say you run a website for both computer sales and repair. Rather than create “doorway” pages for "computer sales" keywords and "computer repair" keywords that redirects to your home page, you could set up each section of your website to optimize specifically for “computer sales” searches and “computer repair” searches.
Secondly, doorway pages could actually result in your website being completely removed from search engine results. Search engines are constantly removing doorway pages from its index if they feel the doorway is deceitful or the intention is deceptive. Some search engines will also remove the linking websites. That could mean your actual website could suffer from potential future searches and face a steep uphill climb to get re-included with search engine indexing. This also means that you should not link directly to a doorway from your website.
Google has published their stance on doorway pages as follows:
“Avoid 'doorway' pages created just for search engines, or other 'cookie cutter' approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content…
…trying to deceive (spam) our web crawler by means of hidden text, deceptive cloaking or doorway pages compromises the quality of our results and degrades the search experience for everyone. We think that's a bad thing.
…If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or 'throwaway' domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google's index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it's best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to 'help' you.”
Choose a reputable SEO firm
If you use an SEO firm to help with your website optimization, make sure you choose one that is reputable. Ask them about what SEO techniques they employ. Post questions and read online bulletin board comments about SEO firms. Be wary of ones who use roguish techniques to serve their own purposes. SEO companies who develop doorway web pages often include links to their own websites. Traffic may be redirected to websites other than your own, improving their ranking while decreasing yours.
SEO companies may want to use your domain server to host their own doorway pages, or even put “shadow domains” to other companies inside doorways that they create for you. Some will even guarantee ranking or offer to sell you keywords that work for your website. You may encounter an SEO company that offers you vague explanations or is altogether secretive about releasing their techniques and processes.
When you try to promote your website, always research the best SEO methods. You want to use effective methods that improve traffic to your site, and avoid techniques like doorways that may foil your potential customers and cause your website to be blacklisted from search engines. If you use an SEO firm to help your website, make sure they are ethical and do not use “tricks” to serve their own purposes.
Resources:
To gain access to the most up-to-date SEO strategies, fill out the form below to sign up for our newsletter. This newsletter will help you know what Google's up to as well as how you can get your website ranking higher without raising any red flags.
{"http://www.seositecheckup.com/articles/6":{"data":[]}}
Read Related Articles About On Page SEO
- How to Build Relationships and Your Brand With the New Google Images
It?s virtually impossible to say ?SEO? without thinking ?Google.? Google has always been THE search engine to figure out in the world of internet marketing. If you can utilize the free tools they offer, your SEO campaign will be dramatically better than a campaign which does not. - What We Know: a Guide to "The New SEO"
We can't know everything ? especially after the latest algorithm re-haul. After extensive testing and trial-and-error, though, we've been able to determine a framework for getting real results on the search engine positions. - Taking a "Value First, SEO Second" Approach to Internet Marketing
SEO is, by far, the top strategy used by internet marketers and online business owners. It's easy to see why ? with SEO, you open the floodgates to thousands of unique and "targeted" visitors. These people are searching for a website in your niche, so naturally, once they find it, they?ll be likely to buy your product/service. - Three Examples of a Solid Keyword Strategy
It's not that NONE of the old SEO strategies work ? it's just that SEO is in a near constant state of evolution. The best internet marketers realize this and plan ahead with their SEO strategies. When Google makes a change to their algorithm, savvy internet marketers make changes to their SEO campaigns, ensuring their websites stay on page #1 regardless of what Google's doing. - Five Ways to Make Your SEO Process More Organic to Users and Search Engines
Most marketers know that they need to make their SEO and content creation process more organic. If your link building or your content creation appears unnatural or ?spammy,? you can end up setting yourself back weeks or even months in your endeavor to achieve favorable search engine rankings. - Where the Duplicate Content Rule Came from And How it Really Impacts Your SEO
If you have been spending a lot of money on creating hundreds of unique articles or spinning articles in order to create enough unique content for your article submissions, this might be one of the most important things you?ve read in a long time. Contrary to what many have come to believe, content duplication is something which you can use in your content marketing strategy, and if you do it right, it won?t hurt your SEO. - Five Creative Ways to Add Value and Credibility to Your Website
Value and credibility are the two most important factors when it comes to growing your website. Although they are synergistic (meaning when you focus on one, the other one also improves), you should always be putting yourself in the position of your viewers when building a website. - When Seconds Count: The Importance of Fast Loading Times
Search engines are becoming more conscious of loading times when it comes to determining the rank of your website and also PPC quality scores. However, just how important is page load time the owner of the website? Does it really make that big of a difference when it comes to the bottom line goal for your website to generate qualified traffic and to achieve conversions? In this article, we'll be looking at some spastics which might surprise you about the difference which your page load time makes. - How to Create Well Optimized and Natural Sounding Content
When it comes to creating content for your website or articles for building links back, it can be difficult to create something which is well optimized with your target keywords but which also looks smooth and natural to your human readers. Optimized, keyword rich content often sounds mechanical and even grammatically incorrect, especially when it comes to optimizing for long tail keywords. - SEO Site Structure Principles
Learn the important guidelines for properly structuring your site for search engines. - Using Silo Structure or Maximum On Page SEO Effectiveness
A common problem for on page optimization is keeping the content within your website organized so that the search engines can make a clear distinction as to the theme or your pages. - Speed Up Your Website to Increase Traffic
Learn how speeding up your website can drive traffic and sales. Also learn common methods for decreasing page loading times. - Five Simple Things You Can Do to Increase Conversions On Your Website
The ultimate goal of having a website is to generate more business for your organization. This is true whether your objective is to generate more leads for off-line services, sell shippable products, sell memberships or sell downloadable products. Of course, one way to do this is to achieve a higher ranking with the search engines and to thus attract more traffic to your site. - How to Optimize Your Meta-titles, Descriptions and Keywords
The term "meta data" is used to describe information within the coding of your site that the search engines use to index your site. The search engine companies send programs called "spiders" out to gather information about your site and determine how to display it in the search results page. - How to Use Effective Meta Tags
Learn how to effectively use meta-tags to increase your search engine visibilty and referral traffic. - How Do Outbound Links Affect SEO?
Find out the impact of outbound linking on your site's SEO and the best strategies for building outbound links. - Alt Tags and Other Image Optimization Tools
Having an attractive site is important for making a good first impression on your visitors. This is why it's crucial that you use great looking images to accompany your site copy and to communicate the overall "personality" of your company. - Traffic Conversion Strategies
Learn several great strategies for improving conversions on your website. - How Analytics Tools Can Guide Your SEO Efforts
Learn how and which analytics tools can improve your SEO efforts. - Split Testing to Improve Your Site's Performance
Learn how split testing can greatly improve conversions and user behaviors on your site. - How to Optimize Your PPC Landing Page for the Google Quality Score
Pay per click (PPC) marketing can prove to be an effective tool for driving traffic to your site and testing variables to optimize your traffic conversion. However, succeeding at PPC marketing takes more than just placing a bid per click that will get you in the top position. It’s also important that your website’s “quality score” is up to par. Without a great quality score,
All Categories:
- Basic SEO (19 articles)
- Online Marketing Tips (18 articles)
- Off Page SEO (13 articles)
- Social Media Marketing (12 articles)
- Seo Product Reviews (4 articles)
- SEO News (6 articles)
- SEO Content Creation (14 articles)
- SEO Programming Topics (14 articles)
- How to Avoid SEO Pitfalls (9 articles)
- SEO Outsourcing (6 articles)
- How to Get More Traffic (10 articles)
- Advanced SEO Strategies (2 articles)
