Upon hearing about SEO, you’ve probably come across the term Doorway Pages.
This is another black-hat SEO method designed to gain organic traffic quickly.
However, the result is often counterproductive.
In this post, you’ll find out:
- What doorway pages are?
- How doorway pages affect your SEO?
- How to recognize and avoid doorway pages?
- What is the difference between a doorway page and a landing page?
- What threats doorway pages pose to your website and search engine optimization?
Let’s get started.
What are Doorway Pages?
Door Pages, also known as Gate Pages, are websites meticulously created to achieve top rankings in search engine results for specific queries.
Their main goal is to funnel traffic to a website. However, they fall short of providing substantial value to the users.
Intensely optimized with targeted keywords, these sites typically guide users to other similar sites on the same website or redirect them entirely to a different domain.
Doorway pages are created with the primary objective of enhancing online visibility and achieving higher rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs) for more general keyword phrases.
How Doorway Pages Affect SEO?
Doorway pages significantly impact SEO, but there’s nothing in common with the positive results.
They are considered a black-hat SEO technique, as they attempt to deceive search engines and manipulate rankings.
A doorway page entices with its attractive landing page, but ultimately redirects to sites with very low rankings. Such actions negatively impact both the traffic-generating site and the one it redirects to.
Google has developed specific algorithms aimed at combating this practice.
In the best-case scenario, your site will receive a manual penalty, which you can remove in a few days or weeks. In the worst case, your site will be banned, and all your work will be in vain.
Doorway Page vs. Landing Page
The purpose of a landing page is to generate organic traffic. A landing page aims to turn the visitor into a buyer. Most often, a landing page leads to a potential purchase or conversion. Thus, the “landing” page, as the target, is for the visitor to “land” on a specific page.
What’s the purpose of the doorway page?
Well, doorway pages, on the other hand, are designed to trick search engines and don’t prioritize the user experience or provide valuable content.
At the first glance, it is similar to a landing page in that it leads a visitor somewhere; however, it never takes them to desirable locations. As a subpage, it artificially inflates traffic but offers nothing beneficial.
All-in-all, a doorway page brings no value to the client whatsoever.
Doorway Pages and Search Results
Hell yeah, search engines don’t like doorway pages.
To such an extent that Google invented a special algorithm to fight against doorway pages.
They are harmful, don’t add value for the user, and most often lead to sites that shouldn’t be visited. In other words—everything that search engines don’t tolerate.
Eliminate Doorways from the Index
You can also remove doorways from the indexes. How to do it?
Here are 3 main methods:
- Use Robots.txt: this file tells search engines which sites or sections of your site to exclude from indexing. By specifying the URLs of the doorway pages in the robots.txt file, you can prevent them from being crawled and indexed.
- Add a ‘Noindex’ Tag: probably the most common, and the least complicated. You can use a ‘noindex’ meta tag on your doorway pages. This tag instructs search engines not to index these specific sites. It’s more direct than robots.txt and useful if you want certain pages crawled (to understand the site structure) but not indexed.
- 301 Redirects: this way, you permanently redirect a doorway page to a more relevant or updated page on your website. It helps transfer any accumulated page ranking to the new page.
What are Better Alternatives to Using Doorway Pages?
1/ Create Helpful Content- and Traffic-Oriented Pages
Of course, those sites are designed to generate a lot of traffic through a big number of keywords.
The more keywords that can be found on a given page, the better.
There’s one rule: stick to similar topics.
No one will read about running, colorful lamps, or fishing on your website. Unless you want to be like Amazon.com, then—good luck!
However, if you plan to conquer the SEO market in a chosen niche—ensure similar content on each of the subpages.
Interestingly—#1 in SERPs has also ranked in the top 10 for nearly 1000 other relevant keywords.
How do you do it?
A lot of quality content!
Quality content, meaning content that is useful, relevant in a given area, and sought after.
I’ll give you a pro tip to get the results fast: avoid the keyword stuffing.
Stick to the rule that the percentage of keywords should not be higher than 2%.
To correctly verify when density occurs, use the tool SEOReviewTools.com. Personally, I use it on a daily basis. Works impeccably.
If you notice that the number is significantly higher (4%, and more), paraphrase it automatically.
Possible? More than certain.
2/ Work on Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are not chosen randomly.
They are crafted by skilled SEO specialists, copywriters, and professional bloggers, ensuring high quality. Ultimately, both users and search engines prioritize high quality.
Focus on high-quality, long-tail keywords to attract customers from your niche who actually have problems you can solve.
First, prioritize the client, then consider actions against doorway pages.
None of the gate pages focus on long-tail keywords; they usually highlight short-tail keywords, which are less meaningful.
If you want to simplify your work, use keyword exploration tools like Senuto or ZoomInfo. Reliable & affordable tool for mastering search engine optimization.
3/ Make Meta Description Readable and Short Enough
Landing pages that lead to specific purchases are enticing, consistent, and make it clear what to do to buy.
In contrast, doorway pages are uniform and stand out from the rest of the site.
An additional element is the meta-description. Typically, SEO description tags are too long and not appropriate for the domain name, as the exemplary image shows.
Want to make the description short enough? Match between 50–60 characters, not more.
Meta description plays a crucial role if you want to attract the right audience, and outperform your competition.
9 Characteristic Features of Doorway Pages
- Keyword-Stuffing: these sites are full of keywords and phrases intended to rank highly but offer little (but usually nothing) value to users.
- Cloaked Sites: they show different content to search engines than what’s shown to users—misleading both.
- Rich Snippet Manipulation: sites designed to trick search engines into displaying rich snippets that aren’t representative of the page’s content.
- Redirects: these sites automatically redirect visitors to a different page, often used to trick search engines into ranking the content higher and faster.
- Bridge Pages: similar to redirect pages, bridge ones take the user to an unrelated page, but often use more subtle methods than automatic redirection.
- Shady Affiliate Platforms: these are low-quality, full-of-links sites that offer no additional value and simply exist to funnel users to affiliate products. No clicks, no commission. That affiliate-like approach wouldn’t exist.
- Mirror Websites: multiple websites that contain similar or identical content but different URLs, aiming to dominate search results. They are often penalized due to the surpass of the same content.
- Geo-Targeting: target specific geographic locations or languages, but are low in quality and aren’t tailored to the audience’s needs.
- Automatically Generated Content: created using automated tools, nonsensical with no valuable content, to manipulate search engine rankings. The sad truth? It really never worked.
In short, doorway pages aim to trick search engine rankings. Moreover, they seek to quickly influence a site’s position by leading to sites that are misleading and repel users with their UX.
Creating low-quality websites harms both the search engine and the site itself.
Currently, Google rigorously evaluates doorway pages through its algorithm, eventually getting them banned.
Does it make sense to attract users to fishy pages that seemingly resemble landing pages?
If it ever did, now it absolutely doesn’t.
Enrich UX and Categories on Your Website
No matter the industry or the goal of your website—the better the UX, the more clients you’ll attract, and the higher your website ranking.
Despite the enticing appearance, focus on the usability of your site’s categories.
Expand the category and subcategories with navigational links leading to further pages.
Make more visible and emphasize: links to the blog (and links from the blog leading to products or categories), the latest content and updates, and recommendations left by your customers.
Easier access means more customers.
More customers mean greater trust from Google for your site.
And greater trust from Google leads to a high ranking. And so the cycle continues.
That’s why ease of access to materials, products, and knowledge is simply profitable.
FAQs for Doorway Pages SEO
What is the Difference Between a Doorway Page and a Landing Page?
A landing page aims to generate organic or paid traffic and convert visitors into buyers. Its task is straightforward and always the same—striving to increase conversion, regardless of the conditions under which it is set.
In contrast, doorway pages may look similar but typically have nothing concrete to offer. Even if they redirect you to a product page, there’s a 100% certainty that you won’t make any purchases.
How to detect a doorway page?
Despite how it may seem, identifying a gateway page isn’t challenging. These sites typically exhibit generic content, excessive use of keywords, and an abundance of links directing to other pages on the same site.
If you come across an unusual redirection when clicking a link, it’s probably a gateway page.
Where is it most common to find doorway pages?
Certainly, pornographic websites and suspicious affiliate marketing platforms. These are places that generate profits from clicks, followed by commissions from purchases.
Surely, more than once, you’ve noticed an ad banner saying “you won an iPhone!”, and clicked, and you found a dating app?
This is the definition of the doorway page.
Takeaways
Doorway pages, a black-hat SEO method, aim to gain organic traffic quickly but often result in counterproductive outcomes.
Gate pages lure customers to your website. But they certainly won’t compel them to take appropriate action.
If you want to quickly position your site—remember, it’s only a short-term result. In the end, you’ll lose more than you gain.
Avoid black-hat SEO techniques. Follow Google’s policy, and the results your site generates will last longer, despite algorithm updates—your site won’t suffer as much.
What’s your experience with doorway pages? Have they also redirected you to a site you’d rather avoid?
Let me know in the comments. And if you like this article—share it with your network.
P.S. If you enjoy this content, and you find this helpful, be my guest, and support my blogging journey! 😉
Thanks,
Simon
Author Profile
- Simon Gorlak is a Digital Marketing Expert with over 8 years of experience. He specializes in 3 areas: SEO, Lead Generation on LinkedIn, and Email Marketing. Simon's blog gathers knowledge that helps Marketers & C-level to increase profits from their online businesses. Also, his content helps to reach the most difficult customers, make others' content to be read & purchased. Besides digital marketing, Simon speaks 4 languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish & works as a Head of Business at an Indian Start-up.
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