What are doorway pages?
Doorway pages are specially optimized pages for one search engine
and 1-3 keywords. They are also known as gateway, bridge, entry, jump
and supplemental pages. Companies use doorway pages to achieve higher
search engine rankings by giving each search engine what it wants.
Doorway pages stand on their own, separate from the rest of the site.
These pages usually feature a logo, some text and a link that asks visitors
to enter for more information.
Importance of doorway pages
Doorway pages provide webmasters with an opportunity to rank high
for any keyword, with any search engine. If a site contains dynamic content,
frames, multimedia files or large graphics, doorway pages are a must.
They give these sites, which
are not completely indexed by search engines because of file formats,
a chance to achieve a Top 20 position. Other sites use this technique
as well.
Aren't doorway pages spam?
Doorway pages were given a bad name by webmasters who created thousands
of doorway pages with meta refresh tags and invisible keywords. If these
spam elements aren't used, doorway pages (in moderate amounts) are not
considered spam.
Recently, search engines started penalizing for nearly identical pages.
Since all doorway pages have basically the same text, some sites were
blacklisted for spam. To avoid this from happening, vary text on your
doorway pages. It needs to be more than just the substitution of one keyword,
so vary sentences and the size of a page.
Create effective doorway pages
To create effective doorway pages, use only 1-3 keywords per page.
If you use more, your pages will be diluted and not fully optimized. Pick
your three most important keywords and optimize them for Top 10 search
engines.
You will need extensive knowledge of every search engine to create successful
doorway pages. Any statistics that you find will be useful in this stage.
Analyzing your competition may also help with strategizing. Click here
to learn more about analyzing
your competition for search engines.
A rule for every engine
Even though you will need statistics for every engine before creating
doorway pages, there are guidelines that doorway pages for all engines
will follow. You may not know if you will need to use meta or alt tags,
but you will always need to pay attention to these three elements:
- Keyword Frequency
- This measures the amount of time a keyword is repeated. Keywords repeated
- Keyword Weight/Density
- This is the percentage of keywords in relationship to all the other
words. The higher the percentage, the better.
- Keyword Prominence
- Your keywords should come first! Most important keywords should
be at the top of the page and in the beginning of a sentence.
Never use doorway pages for directories
Directories, which use humans to review web sites, don't enjoy doorway
pages. You risk being blacklisted by submitting a doorway page to a directory.
Since people don't need to see your HTML, its optimization is unnecessary.
Key ingredient - search engine information
Thorough search engine information is needed to create doorway pages.
Remember, to give the engines what they want, you need to know what they
want. The following two tables provide all the necessary information:
- What search
engines want - This table was compiled from search engines'
Help and FAQ pages. It provides the latest information which won't get
you in trouble for spam.
- Search engine
statistics - Provides exact information for major search engines
that will help you create doorway pages.
- Search engine partnerships
- Provides information on services used by major search engines and
directories. Learn who you should submit to and create better doorway
pages.
Learn the elements that affect search engine rankings
There are many factors that affect search engine positioning. The
ones that you can optimize doorway pages for include:
Avoid the use of spam
Learn what each search engine considers spam, and never use that for your
doorway pages. Refer to the search
engine statistics table for more information.
An Overview
Doorway Pages
- Can help rank high
for any keyword in any engine
- Optimize for one
keyword, one engine
- Don't create them
for directories
- Learn what search
engines want
- Don't spam
