Doorway pages

[chihpih]

What do you guys think of doorway pages for search engines? Do people still use them with successfull results?

[WealthStream]

Personally, I don't think they would work that well for search engine traffic. It's best to send visitors directly to your homepage where they can get a good idea of what your site offers. Having a "doorway" page leading to your site just gives your visitors one more opportunitiy to get bored and close their browser window.

[chihpih]

but at the same time you can get additional visitors from se's that wouldnt normally get to your main page.

[WealthStream]

That's true. I guess it doesn't hurt to make a doorway page, but don't spend too much of your time and effort on designing and marketing it. Instead, focus the bulk of your marketing energy on your website itself.

[shabbirbhimani]

Google webmasters guidelines tell to avoid it.

[tke71709]

It's blackhat SEO, but that doesn't mean it doesn't still work.

I wouldn't recommend any blackhat on sites that you actually plan on growing. Best reserved for throwaway domains.

[AnselWade]

Thanks for the help and ideas!

[matt-]

Theres two kinds of 'doorway' pages, the blackhat seo version is a page stuffed with keywords just to get the serps, the user then finds no use of this page and either goes back to the serps or navigates on through the site to find what they want.

The other is a page that works as a doorway to your site on the subject, think sub-homepages for each subject, these should be like your homepage, offering the visitor relevant content, with routes to continue through your site for more information. Of course, for seo you'll want to make sure you have the right keywords etc, but keeping to decent limits.

Larger sites on the internet often use this method, and link to it from email campaigns etc, to further support the campaign and raise conversion rates - it is too spoken of in a few marketing books i've read.

So in my opinion, they're ok aslong as their useful, not spamming.

Hope that helps.