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What Are Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are single pages created only to direct users to specific web page. They do not possess any valuable content and are made to rank well in search engines for desired keywords and funnel users from search engines to the site of destination.

They are not meant to be accessed from anywhere else than search engines. You will not find a doorway page through a sites navigation or a site map.

Doorway pages are also known as portal pages, jump pages, gateway pages, zebra pages, entry pages and bridge pages.

Doorway pages are not designed for people to read but for search engines to crawl it, add to its indexes and rank well for some key phrase. They deceive search engine algorithms to drive traffic to some website.

Google on doorway pages:

Whether deployed across many domains or established within one domain, doorway pages tend to frustrate users, and are in violation of our webmaster guidelines.

If the site has no valuable content, is not an integral part of your website, you do not want human beings to find it, you do not link to it from any site within your website and don’t show it anywhere in the navigation menu that probably IS a doorway page.

Why Doorway Pages Are Bad

• They do not add any valuable, quality content
• They are not created for people only search engines
• They are designed to trick search engines
• They have very poor click through rates
• They frustrate people
• They usually advertise adult, warez, illegal content

How Doorway Pages Work

A webmaster/black hat SEO build a web page with only purpose to rank well in search engines for particular key phrase and submit it to search engines. When a user looks for “Nike shoes” they enter a web page from search engine and instead of a site selling Nike shoes they are presented a site that says “click here to go to Nike shoe shop”. Isnt that frustrating? And if they click on it, there is no guarantee that the site will be selling Nike shoes. It may be an adult website, warez website, spam website or website with viruses.

A webmaster may also switch the doorway page to a “real” page when the doorway page gets high ranks. That way a search engine will still present an old websites meta data, but the destination page will be completely different. Of course the next time a search engine visits the web page it will update its indexes, but until then it will show the old data.

The same webmaster may also use meta refresh tag, JavaScript, server side or .htaccess redirections to redirect users directly to the destination page right after arriving to the page from a search engine results page.

Many companies use automated software to generate hundreds of doorway pages and easily submit it to search engines to rank well for desired keywords. Some doorway pages may be dynamic pages generated by scripting languages such as Perl and PHP.

You should avoid using doorway pages as it is an unethical technique just to trick both users and search engines. If you use it you risk being banned or removed from search engine indexes. *Don’t do it.*