One very effective tool for getting websites ranked highly in the search engines has been doorway pages. That's why you see so much written about them. They are THE hot topic. However, some sites have abused the search engines by submitting hundreds if not thousands of doorway pages which added little of value to their database.
Now it appears that some search engines are filtering for this type of doorway page. They are watching for pages that say little more than click here to learn more about whatever keyword. They want to provide their search engine users with pages with relevant content. This basically means that you need to re-examine the doorway pages you create and make sure they are about what they say they are about and that they provide valuable content.
What does that mean? It means the best doorway pages will be short informational pages focusing on a specific topic. For example, lets say your website is about growing house plants. Then you would have tightly focused pages on different types of house plants, different plant diseases, how to propogate plants, poisonous plants, etc.
You create pages about a specific plant, then when someone searches for say African violets, they find your page because it is a highly relevant page about African violets. That's what the ideal doorway page is. It draws people to your site who are searching for a specific topic and then points them to more information on related topics, products and services.
In addition to being a tightly focused page - not targeting too many keywords, your page should have:
- A descriptive, enticing title that contains your keywords This serves two purposes. It tells the search engines what is important on the page and it tells the user of the search engine why he should visit your site. - A keyword metatag containing your target keywords
- A description metatag containing your target keywords This serves the same two purposes as the title tag. It tells the surfer why he should click through to YOUR site and it tells the search engines what's important on this page.
- Alt image tags. These tell those surfing with images turned off what the image is about. Ideally you would include your keywords here too.
- Comment tags. They tell the webmaster or others what different parts of the page are about and ideally would also contain your target keywords. Some search engines index comment tags.
- Links leading to other parts of your site. These should tell what's waiting on the next page. For example a link to a page about African violets would include this keyword phrase in the link title.
- Using your keywords in the page title. This helps with some search engines. Just do a search at any major search engine and you will notice that many of the returns have the keyword phrase in the page title. So... for example you might name a page
african-violet.htm.
- Using your keywords in your domain name. This helps! So the site in our example might have the domain name www.houseplants.com. Since some directories index alphabetically (such as Yahoo!) you might look for something closer to the beginning of the alphabet to give yourself a slight edge. Domain names can now be purchased for as little as under $15, so it's well worth the small investment.
The idea is to create short pages that contain all of the elements in the right place to do well for your target keyword and your target search engine. There are tools that will help you analyze why certain competing webpages do well at the major engines. That way you can emulate these well designed pages and theoretically you should do just as well. One of the tools I recommend for this purpose is Web Position Gold. You can download a free trial version at my website. Just visit:
http://williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/tk.cgi?wpg
You can also use Web Positon Gold to generate doorway pages but they are fairly plain looking. You would need to plus them up. I would recommend adding more content on your topic to the pages Web Position Gold generates. I would also add graphics or style elements that makes the page blend in with your site layout more.
A doorway page should look like a regular part of your site. It should be just one more page on your site, designed specifically to place well with the engines but also designed to be filled with relevant content. If the page is too generic, some search engines might not list, or might even ban your pages. At the same time, if the page is too generic looking, it won't entice visitors to click further into your site. You could overcome this by using html, java, or cgi redirects. However, some search engines can also penalize for doing this.
The bottom line is that search engines want to deliver pages containing relevant content to their users. You can design pages that target specific keywords and specific engines, but they should also contain that relevant content. Build a web page like that and not only will it rank well, it will stay top ranked for a long time. There is no magic formula - just some study and hard work.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Willie Crawford is a search engine optimization and promotion specialist. For more on building your internet based business and
promoting your site visit his site at: http://williecrawford.com.
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