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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.
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