Gateway and Doorway Pages

This is for the people who think that creating gateway pages (also known as doorway or bridge pages) is critical, if not, necessary in achieving a high ranking in the major search engines. You might think this, but it definitely isn't true.

There are a lot of optimisation companies who will promise to help you achieve a high ranking in the major search engines by creating doorway pages. These are pages that are independent of your own site but are loaded with keywords and submitted to the major search engines. The intention being to serve search engines a keyword-stuffed page, and end-users another that is consistent with the rest of the site. The methodology behind this varies from simple page refreshes to sophisticated cloaking.

Although there might be the slightest upside, there is also a downside which is significantly greater. The problem is that doorway pages create congestion in the search engines which has an impact on the number of good quality results that come up.

In an attempt to counteract the creators of doorway pages and the congestion that followed, the major search engines have changed their algorithms (criteria) so that in most cases both the main site and its doorway pages are all banished from the search engines. The result of this for a business can be dire as I am sure you can appreciate. It would be bad enough to not be able to use your site as a marketing tool and reap the rewards of a high ranking. In the worst case scenario your site could be excluded from the search engines altogether!

So clearly you can see how the possible, and rare, benefits that may happen with the few sites that have doorway pages is definitely not worth the risk of what will almost certainly happen, your site disappearing off of the face of the search engines...