Doorway Pages
Different Types Explained
Just like cloaking these pages are also specially created for search engines, the only difference
is, these are ‘gateway’ or ‘bridge’ pages. They are created to do well for particular phrases.
They are programmed to be visible only by specific search engine spiders. They are also
known as portal pages, jump pages, gateway pages and entry pages.
Doorway pages are built specifically to draw search engine visitors to your web site. They are
standalone pages designed only to act as doorways to your site. Doorway pages are a very bad
idea for several reasons, though many SEO firms use them routinely. Doorway pages have
acquired something of a bad reputation due to the frequent use (and abuse) in spamming
search engines. The most flagrant abuses include mass production of machine-generated pages
with only minor variations, sometimes using re-direction or cloaking so the visitor does not
see the actual page requested. Doorways used in this manner add to the clutter that search
engines and Web searchers must contend with.
The purpose behind building Doorway pages is just to trick search engines for higher rankings
therefore doorway pages is considered to be unethical SEO practice. The fact is that doorway
pages don't do a very good job of generating traffic, even when they are done by "experts."
Many users simply hit the back buttons when presented with a doorway page. Still, many SEO
firms count those first visits and report them to their clients as successes. But these very few
visitors go ahead and visit their product’s page.
There are various ways to deliver Doorway pages. Let’s analyze them one by one.Low Tech Delivery:
When webmasters create and submit a page targeted toward a particular phrase, it is called
Low Tech Delivery. Here sometimes webmasters create pages for special search engines as
well but the problem is users don’t arrive at the desired page. And it is most likely that if any
visitor lands on non-informative page, he won’t navigate any further.
In such case ‘Meta Refresh Tag’ plays a vital role. It is an HTML tag which automatically
refreshes the page in defined time. The Meta refresh tag they use here is of zero second delay.
Therefore you most likely won’t be able to see the optimized content before being sent
elsewhere. These META tags are also a red flag to search engines that something may be
wrong with the page. Because jump pages manipulate results and clutter indexes with
redundant text they are banned by search engines. Now a days search engines don’t accept
Meta refresh tags. To get around that, some webmasters submit a page, and then swap it on
the server with the "real" page once a position has been achieved.
This is "code-swapping," which is also sometimes done to keep others from learning exactly
how the page ranked well. It's also called "bait-and-switch." The downside is that a search
engine may revisit at any time, and if it indexes the "real" page, the position may drop. But
there is another problem with these pages. As they are targeted to key phases, they could be
very generic in nature and pages can be easily copied and used on other sites and since they
are copied the fear of banning is always there.
Agent Delivery:
The next step up is to deliver a doorway page that only the search engine sees. Each search
engine reports an "agent" name, just as each browser reports a name. An agent is a browser, or
any other piece of software that can approach web servers and browse their content. Example:
Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, Search Engine Spiders.
The advantage to agent name delivery is that you can send the search engine to a tailored page
while they direct users to the actual content you want them to see. This eliminates the entire
"bridge" problem altogether. It has also the added benefit of "cloaking" your code from prying
eyes.
But still the problem is there. Someone can telnet to your web server and report their agent
name as being from a particular search engine and they will see exactly what you are delivering. Additionally, some search engines may not always report the exact same agent
name, specifically to help keep people honest.
IP Delivery / Page Cloaking:
Time for another step up. Instead of delivering by agent name, you can also deliver pages to
search engines by IP address, assuming you've compiled a list of them and maintain it. IP
delivery is a technique to present different contents depending on the IP address of the client.
Everyone and everything that accesses a site reports an IP address, which is often resolved
into a host name. For example, I might come into a site while connected to AOL, which in
turn reports an IP of 199.204.222.123. The web server may resolve the IP address into an
address: ww-tb03.proxy.aol.com, for example.
Frames:
HTML frames allow authors to present documents in multiple views, which may be
independent windows or subwindows. Multiple views offer designers a way to keep certain
information visible, while other views are scrolled or replaced. For example, within the same
window, one frame might display a static banner, a second a navigation menu, and a third the
main document that can be scrolled through or replaced by navigating in the second frame.
A framed page like the example shown is actually made up of 4 separate pages, a frameset
page and three content pages. The frameset page tells the browser how big each frame should
be where they should be placed and what pages should be loaded into frame. If the browser or search engine can't display frames or is configured not to, it will render the contents of the
NOFRAMES element.
The homepage or index page of a framed site is the document which contains the frameset and
as you can see from the HTML above there is very little in the way of content for the search
engines to read and index. What is needed is for more information to be added to the
NOFRAMES element.
The best way of achieving this is to add a complete web page within the NOFRAMES tag
including appropriate keyword rich headings and text. A navigation menu should also be
included to provide links to all internal areas of your website. This will not allow the search
engines to index all areas of your website and improve accessibility for those using a browser
or alternate device that does not support frames nor has frames support disabled.
Placing nothing but a long list of keywords will not help your search engine position and may
even be harmful.
Every web page has a unique makeup and location, which is easily definable, except frames.
Frames are multiple pages listing on the same page, and why they can make site navigation
simple, they do not show the pages current address. If you have an interesting article deep
within your site using frames makes it hard for me to link to it. If you force me to link to your
home page then I am probably not going to link to you.
You can get around frames by having a site map from the home page that links to all the
framed pages, but even if these pages list high they will probably lack good navigation since
the framework that contained it is not located with it in the search results.
There is an HTML tag called the NOFRAMES tag, which, when used properly, gives the
search engine spiders the information they need to index your page correctly. I believe it was
designed to give frames-incapable browsers - early versions of browsers that cannot read or
interpret the FRAMESET tags - the ability to "see" the information on a framed site.
Unfortunately, too many sites that utilize this NOFRAMES tag put the following words into
it: "You are using a browser that does not support frames. Update your browser now to view
this page." It might as well say, "We are putting the kiss of death on our Web site and have no
interest in being found in the search engines for relevant keywords regarding our site! Thanks
for not visiting our site because you couldn't find it!"
What happens when you do the above is that the engines will read your TITLE and META
tags (if you even included them) and the above information that the browser is frames-
incapable, and that is what they will index for your site.
Try a search at AltaVista for the following: "does not support frames" and guess what? Nearly
all of them are framed sites that used those words in their NOFRAMES tag. I bet that the
circular-saw maker whose site is ranked number 1 for those keywords doesn't have a clue that
he has put the kiss of death on his Web site! I also bet his site is nowhere to be found under
the keyword "circular saws."
If you want to have a framed site for whatever reason, then for goodness' sake, use your
NOFRAMES tag properly! The proper usage of this tag is to take the complete HTML code
from your inner page and copy it into the NOFRAMES tag.
The above information takes care of your front page. However, there are other issues having
to do with getting the rest of your pages indexed properly when you use a framed site.
Most Web designers use frames for ease of navigation. That is, they have a left-hand frame
with a static navigational bar or buttons that never change. When someone clicks on a button
on the left, the frame to the right brings up the new page accordingly. Because of this type of
design, there are usually no navigational links on any of the inner, framed pages.
Why is this bad? It's bad because you could (and should) optimize these inner pages to rank
high in the search engines. But if you do, and someone searching in the engines finds them,
they will be what I would call orphaned pages.
I'm sure you've come across these at one time or another in your searches: a page that has a bit
of information about what you were searching for but offers no way to get to the rest of the
site!
Savvy Internet users might look at the URL and try finding the root directory, but most users
don't have a clue about doing that. It's too bad for the site owner, who just lost some potential
eyeballs - or worse, a potential customer.
If you use a framed design, it is absolutely imperative to place navigational links on all your
inner pages. At the very least, include a button that links back to your home page. However, I
would recommend that you have links to all your major category pages, as this will help the
search engine spiders visit all the pages, index them all, and rank them high!