Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing Articles

An ethical alternative to Doorway pages?

Definition: A doorway page is content created specifically for the purpose of garnering high placements in the search engines.

Issue: Google makes the 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 the issue of doorway pages, proposes an acceptable alternative and offers some insights into the basic principles of search engine optimization.

To frame the 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 the search engines themselves:

Google, Yahoo, MSN, and all other search engines want to provide the same thing: A prioritized list of links that point to most relevant web sites satisfying the users search criteria.

Relevance is defined as the whether the search results fit the use of search users. Every search engine is trying to provide relevant search results to their users.

The search engine that does the best job of delivering the largest quantity of the most relevant results attracts the most users.

Obviously speed, ease-of-use and marketing has impact popularity
but in the end the quality of the results counts most.

The best way for you to get long-term results is by partnering with the search engines. Partnering means recognizing and supporting the value-proposition that the search engines provide to their end-users:

Provides 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 fame the system. Instead of partnering with the search providers you compete with them. By compete I mean all the effort (and dollars) expended to chase their constantly evolving algorithms and artificially increase your site rankings. These techniques may get you short-term results but many are considered the equivalent of search engine 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 the use of doorway pages.

What is a doorway page? Doorway pages are pages of content that have been specifically designed to achieve high rankings in the search engines. They are often used by websites that don't have an abundance of content within the 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 the 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 the following characteristics:

• A lot of poorly written content, with an abundance of hyperlinked phrases in the body text
• Copy that is stuffed with lists of keywords
• Zero in-bound links from other parts of the 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.
• Redirection that automatically loads a new page once the doorway pages is accessed
  

Bottom line: A doorway page stands alone from your website, and offers little value to searchers

If any of those characteristics exist on the page, and if a number of these pages are created within a single website, Google is likely to discount their value, or worse, ban the site.

If doorway pages are inappropriate then what is a better alternative?

The essay page - An essay page, on the other hand, is integrated into the main website (although not into the navigation structure). It offers real value to the searcher because the content is relevant and well-written. It often has the following characteristics:

• Clean HTML coding with an HTML design similar to that of other pages of the website
• A lot of content, with several hyperlinked phrases in the body text
• Several in-bound links from other parts of the website
• Quality content that offers real value to the searcher
  

Summary and Recommendation

The creation and proper integration of additional content is critical to the ability to achieve consistent top 10 rankings on the most targeted keywords. Essay pages can be valuable when a website cannot be easily scaled to include more content through the main navigation structure. However, the first priority should be increasing content as much as possible before resorting to essay pages.

Over time, your more sophisticated competitors will compete for placement by incorporating significant content, and by implementing important search engine optimization features, not by using essay (or doorway) pages.

If you adopt the doorway page approach in a wrong manner, you will either be catched by search engines such as Google. In addition, your competitor will report your site to Google so that your site will be banned.


Obtaining top search engine rankings requires profund knowledge and requires lots of time, it is wise to use a professional firm to help you build links. Why not ask Agog Digital Marketing Strategy Limited to provide you a proposal? and we have several years of experience.

About the author:
Scott Smigler has been an evangelist for a serious, ROI-based focus on the online channel since he founded Exclusive Concepts in 1997. Exclusive Concepts provides integrated online marketing strategies, Internet brand consulting, search engine marketing campaigns and results-oriented web sites for hundreds of clients that range in size from small ecommerce firms to public companies.