| |
Using doorway pages or a doorway page system is the lazy
man's way of building a website. A doorway page system involves
the use of hidden text and graphic links, creation of a bunch
of doorway pages all separately optimized for different keywords,
and a hidden site map that links to all of the doorway pages.
The doorway pages themselves are filled with optimized text
and function primarily to get visitors to go to your other
pages on your website. One of the problems with this hidden
doorway system is that it smacks of trickery. The doorway
pages don't provide real content to the visitors, but provide
a means to navigate to the other pages on your site.
If this were a legitimate system of navigation, why hide
the text and graphic links, the site map and the doorway pages
in the first place?
Here is one way to create a system of hidden doorway pages.
First, you research relevant but relatively low ranking keywords
for your site that don't have much competition. Second, you
create a bunch of these doorway pages that are optimized for
these keywords. Third, you build a sitemap containing links
to all of these hidden doorway pages. The doorway pages are
not directly linked to your homepage or any other of your
main pages. The sitemap, however, does contain links to all
pages on your site including your homepage and main pages
AND your hidden doorway pages.
This hidden sitemap, once completed, is the only page you
link directly to your homepage. You do this with a hidden
text or graphic link. Creating a hidden graphic link is easy.
You simply create a .jpg or .gif file that has the same color
as the background of your home page. Search robots cannot
distinguish colors inside a pixel-based file. You link this
graphic to your sitemap and you are done. The only telltale
signs that this exists is in your source code and if you happen
to run your cursor over the area it will change to the hand.
Creating a text link is a bit trickier since some search engines
will penalize sitesthat have link text color that is too close
to the background color (especially if it is the same as the
background color).
Some sources suggest you create your pages with a white background
(color code #FFFFFF) and that you create your hidden link
text with an almost white color #EDFAE6 that is almost invisible
to the eye and will not get your penalized with the search
engines.
Now, instead of creating a tricky, hidden doorway page system
filled with no real content for your visitors, why not make
your homepage and other main pages your doorway pages? Instead
of picking a bunch of low-ranking keywords and optimizing
your pages for these keywords, why not pick the highest-ranking
relevant keywords for your business and optimizing all or
most of your pages towards these keywords?
With this method, the trick is to create content-rich, keyword-optimized
pages that serve the dual purpose of informing your visitors
and serving relevant information to the search engines. This
is not the lazy man's approach since this method takes quite
a bit of skill and expertise in writing these pages with both
purposes in mind.
The benefit of making all of your pages content-rich doorway
pages and not hidden doorway pages is threefold. First, you
avoid the ethical gray area of the hidden doorway page approach.
Second, you pick the highest-ranking relevant keywords, build
your website around these words, and make these pages content
rich for your visitors and keyword rich for the search engines
which keep visitors interested in your site (and buying your
products) and when they rank well with the search engine will
bring in more traffic than the lesser ranked, hidden pages.
Third, when you develop content-rich doorway pages you don't
run the risk of the search engines finding your ethically
questionable hidden doorway page system, realizing this is
what is going on, and penalizing your site, burying it deep
within the rankings of the search engine.
Now, you may ask, why not create a content-rich doorway page
system AND a hidden doorway page system? You can, but you
run the previously-mentioned risks plus when you develop a
hidden system, you are taking time away from developing the
rest of your website that could go into other, more productive
areas such as rewriting your pages in respect to content and
keywords or developing new pages. Remember, not all pages
have to do well in the search engines. Some of your pages
are just for your visitors to enjoy like Flash or Shockwave
game pages, streaming audio or video or a product picture
page with very little text on it.
In order to get visitors to come to your site, you may also
want to work on your reciprocal linking with other sites,
buy or trade traffic with other sites, develop your own newsletter,
buy or trade for advertising in other sites' relevant newsletters
and other marketing methods to bring visitors to your site.
Doorway pages may have been the "in" thing a couple
of years ago, but now they have gone out of fashion. But if
you keep your site focused and direct your energy in productive
marketing methods, you site will see significant gains in
traffic. At this point it will be up to you to find ways to
convert your visitors into customers and reap the profits
from your efforts.
|
|
