Before Google came onto the scene with their links-based PageRank,
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 PageRank 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 searchterm, but it is equally valid to select
the site's most relevant existing page for the searchterm, 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.
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