Doorway Pages
Before Google came onto the scene with their link-based Page Rank, doorway pages were the most effective of the search engine optimization techniques, because they didn't usually need any pages to link to them, and top rankings were relatively easy to achieve. But with Page Rank and link popularity playing such a big role these days, are doorway pages still as effective as they used to be?
Doorway
Pages Overview
A doorway page is a web page that is optimized to rank well for a
particular search term. It is called a 'doorway' because people
enter the website by clicking on the doorway page's listing in the
search engines' search results.
It is common for a doorway page to be specially created as a
doorway for a particular search term, but it is equally valid to
select the site's most relevant existing page for the search term,
and optimize it to rank highly in the search engines so that it
becomes the doorway page for that term.
Back in the days when search engines based the rankings solely on
a page's content, it was normal for one doorway page to be created
for each search term. Each page was submitted to the engines and,
if they were optimized better than the competition's pages, they
would achieve top rankings. They could stand alone and didn't need
to be a part of the 'normal' site. Therefore, they didn't need to
be designed for users to see, and so they could include an instant
redirect to the most relevant of the site's content pages. Search
engine optimization was easy back then!
But times change, and search engines no longer base the rankings
solely on a page's content. These days inbound links and inbound
link text are both very important to achieving top rankings. An
'inbound link' is a link that comes into a page - from the
receiving page's viewpoint it is 'inbound'. 'Inbound link text' is
the text on the remote page that users click on.
For Google, inbound links and inbound link text are among the most
important factors in determining rankings. It means that the
traditional, specially created, stand-alone doorway pages are no
longer as successful as they used to be because they need to be
linked to from other pages on the web, and aquiring good links for
them from other websites is just about impossible. What site would
want to link to a doorway page?
But all is not lost for doorway pages. All that's needed is to
rethink what they are and what they do.
