Doorway pages may not be as effective as they once were, but there are still plenty of instances where doorway pages can help an adult Webmaster score more traffic from search engines. The trick with doorway pages is learning what a search engine looks for while knowing how to avoid your pages being penalized as “spam.” Here with advice on building effective doorway pages is Reverend Sassy.

A doorway page (a.k.a.Doorway pages may not be as effective as they once were, but there are still plenty of instances where doorway pages can help an adult Webmaster score more traffic from search engines. The trick with doorway pages is learning what a search engine looks for while knowing how to avoid your pages being penalized as “spam.” Here with advice on building effective doorway pages is Reverend Sassy.

A doorway page (a.k.a. “gateway,” “bridge,” “entry,” “jump” or “supplemental” pages) is essentially a page that repeats a particular keyword numerous times in order to achieve a high ranking on a specific search engine. Of course you will want to focus upon a few keywords or keyword phrases whenever you are building your Web site. Usually these pages are as simple as featuring a logo, some text and a link that encourages visitors to enter the site. Since each search engine uses a different algorithm, Webmasters who use doorway pages have to create separate doorway pages optimized for each search engine. Whatever you decide is right for you, it is important to avoid the temptation to make a doorway page for every keyword or keyword phrase under the sun and then submit them hundreds at a time to all the search engines. This has been so overdone in the past, which is why doorway pages are often considered to be “spam.”

AVOIDING THE SPAM LABEL

There are numerous things that a search engine would consider “spam.” This includes: Meta refresh tags; Invisible text and overuse of tiny text; Irrelevant keywords in the title and Meta tags; Excessive repetition of keywords; Overuse of mirror sites; Submitting too many pages in one day; Identical or nearly identical pages; Submitting to an inappropriate category (this is especially true for directories); Link farms; Frames; Dynamic content; Flash intros.

If possible you should refrain from using these things, but if you must use them, then you are going to need to create doorway pages for the search engines.

Some people are not fond of doorway pages though. Their reason for disliking these pages includes the fact that if you are going to target numerous keywords then you will have to create numerous doorway pages which can easily become an administrative nightmare whenever a search engine decides to change its algorithm. At times like this you can easily find yourself spending much more time on search engine optimization than you spend in carrying on your normal, daily business activities.

DOORWAY PAGE MARKETING IS CHANGING

Today, with the new innovations of search engines such as themes, link popularity and click-tracking, doorway pages no longer work the magic that they once did. You can also thank the fact that search engines are getting better at looking at the whole picture, not just a single page, for this change in the importance of doorway pages. However, doorway pages that contain uniquely optimized text are still an excellent way to rank with the search engines. Also, if your site contains content that can not be spidered, doorway pages may be your only solution.

Let’s take a few minutes to understand how to properly optimize a doorway page.

1. You should never create more doorway pages than there are “real” pages on your Web site. Since search engines understand that some pages cannot be indexed, they will generally allow you to create one page pointing to each page on your site. However, you must make sure that your doorway pages present unique and useful information. You should name these pages the same as the keywords that you are targeting. For instance, if you are after the phrase “redhead pussy” then you will want to name your page “redhead_pussy.html”

2. Whenever you are creating a doorway page, remember that function is more important than form. While you want to make your pages something that a visitor would want to enter, you don’t want to overdo it. Use proper grammar with an easy to find “ENTER” link. Otherwise, you’re likely to lose visitors or set off a “spam” alert.

3. While link popularity is not popular amongst many Webmasters, it is still a way of life. Search engines have created this system to do away with doorway page “spam.” Thus, when you are constructing your doorway pages you need to make sure that they link to your root domains, key sections inside of your site, and other doorway pages. However, it is not the number of links that counts so much as the quality of the sites that you are linking to. (Special consideration is given to sites that have been registered with The Open Directory and Yahoo by most search engines.) However, there is still the question as to whether you should be concerned about the link popularity of an individual page or the entire site. Usually you should be concerned with the site as a whole. However there are a few exceptions, but these usually have to do with sites that are on free hosts, thus we needn’t concern ourselves with this.

4. In order to create a high-ranking doorway page, you will need to know what search engines want. The best way to discover this is through studying top-ranking pages for your keyword. You need to beware of pages that may be using cloaking. Most of the time you can tell that a page has been cloaked by looking at the title of the first page as displayed in the search engine results and the actual title of the page whenever you are opening it in your browser. If there’s even the smallest discrepancy between the two titles then you can make a pretty safe bet that the page has been cloaked. If the titles are the same then take a look at the Meta Description tag. (The only search engines that do not support this tag are Fast, Google, Lycos and Northern Light.) Next, make sure that the title and the description match, and that your keyword is used on the page; if not then it is probably cloaked.

Once you understand these key points it’s time to create the doorway page. This page should contain your keywords at the top of the page and at the beginning of a sentence. Use this text to entice the visitor to want to click upon the “ENTER” link. This is especially important whenever you consider that some search engines do not recognize the Meta Description tag. You also do not want your paragraphs to be too long. In fact, each paragraph should be no more than three or four sentences long. (Remember that people on the Web simply do not have the time or the desire to read long paragraphs.)

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

Each of the doorway pages that you create needs to be tweaked according to which search engine you are submitting it to. You do NOT want to simply copy another page though, since that will present a copyright violation. However, you can modify the doorway page in such a way that the statistics for the different elements in the doorway page are similar to those in the comparison page.

In conclusion, remember that a doorway page should:

Help your site rank high for any keyword in any search engine.
Be optimized for one keyword, one search engine.
Be tailored to each search engine’s specifications.
Should never be used for directories.

Keep this in mind and you can’t go wrong! Good luck!

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Reverend Sassy is a member of The ADULTWEBMASTER Magazine’s writing staff. Her wide range of knowledge about topics of interest to adult Webmasters comes from her years of practice building and operating adult Web sites.