What are Doorway Pages?

Doorway Pages, AKA Gateway Pages, Portal Pages, Entry Pages (and sometimes erroneously as Landing Pages) are a series web pages that are created with the sole intention of tricking a search engine into indexing them. The idea behind Doorway Pages is that once they are indexed by a search engine, anyone searching for one of the terms or keywords the Doorway Page targets will find their way to the Doorway Page and ultimately the actual website they were built for.

Doorway Doorway Pages are nothing new and go back to the early days of Search Engine Optimization in the mid 1990’s. Typically Doorway Pages are automatically generated using software and as a result they are prone to lots of grammatical errors. The text content on a doorway page rarely makes sense when read and is usually soaked with keywords and phrases the creator wants to target. In most cases when a visitor reaches a Doorway Page, the page will be refreshed and the target website will appear on the screen. The redirect is often done with Javascript or the HTML Meta Refresh Tag and often happens so fast the user doesn’t notice the refresh.

Why are Doorway Pages a Bad Idea?

Doorway Pages have always been seen as a spammy method of SEO from the very beginning. Professional SEO experts consider Doorway Pages to be a Black Hat technique that should be avoided. As a whole, search engines are smart enough to detect the difference between a Doorway Page and legitimate content. As a result, Doorway Pages are often removed from search indexes when found and the resulting target pages may also be punished in their rankings as well.

Are Doorway Pages Ever Legitimate?

Some might argue that Enhanced or Rich Content Doorways are a legitimate form of Doorway Pages. Enhanced Doorway Pages are web pages that contain the same design and navigation elements as the main website. Content on the Enhanced Doorway Page is custom created using hand-written optimized text and content. Again their purposes are to become indexed high in the search engines. While Enhanced Doorway Pages are a much more legitimate and less spammy method, we recommend providing good quality content on the main site to begin with. In this way, you can avoid having to create any Doorway Pages at all and instead place your quality, rich content right on your main site.