Shari On Doorway Pages
Are you confused about what doorway pages are after reading on this blog, you should read a short summary by SEO expert Shari Thurow. Although it is written as long back as 2004 (when we all wore powdered wigs), it is still valid.Shari Thurow’s starting point is of course that the search engines consider doorway pages as spam. “If you or your SEM firm violates the terms and conditions set forth by both the human-based (Yahoo directory, Open Directory, Business.com) and spider-based (Google, Inktomi, Teoma) search engines, both your site and the SEM firm’s site will be penalized or banned.”
Shari goes on to show us some of the characteristics of doorway pages. Read the whole article if you want all details. Here I’ll extract what is of interest in the cases we have written about here on this blog. In the case about the Norwegian SEO our view was fully shared by the Google Webspam Team, with the exclusion of the SEO firm from Google as a consequence.
So, what is a doorway page? What are the doorway page characteristics? This is how Shari Thurow puts it:
“Doorway pages come in all shapes and sizes. Some are very easy to spot. They’re often computer-generated, text-only pages of gibberish. If human visitors viewed the page, they wouldn’t purchase from the company. The page is ugly and nonsensical.
Yet some doorway pages are very, very attractive and difficult to spot. They’re designed to visually blend in to a Web site. They have graphic images and navigation schemes. The content contains complete sentences, paragraphs, even reasonable calls to action (CTA). Spam doorway pages aren’t necessarily computer-generated. Staff at SEM firms can and do write doorway page content.”
Doorway pages can take many forms. The basics is that they are made to manipulate the search results. This is something neither we (the users), nor the search engines will accept. If you can’t compete following the ethical guidelines and the abundance of good (often) free SEO advices available, you should spend your money on AdWords and other marketing activities.
Shari Thurow asks everyone to be on the alert for artificial links. She writes: “Listen for any phrase that resembles “instant link popularity.” Even if you don’t change your site, unethical SEM firms may build hundreds, even thousands, of doorway pages that point to your site to artificially boost link popularity.”
Artificial linking is never a good thing. But when is a link artificial? Let’s turn it upside down and ask: What is a natural link? Natural links are unpaid “votes” from one web page to another. A link from you to your partners is of course legitimate. Also links to related pages, links to pages you would like your users to visit (like my link to Shari’s article), links to other sites you may have, links to customers etc. But when a coffe shop in Bangkok is linking to a dentist in Oslo, and a lawyer in Stockholm is linking to a shop selling dildos and whips, something fishy is obviously going on. (None of these examples have any relevance to our latest analysis.)
So what does Shari Thurow offer instead of doorway pages? The same as every decent SEO would do: search engine friendly information pages meant for users and with an “invitation” to visit them in the form of menu elements or links with meaningful anchor text. Let’s say you sell car stereo systems. It would be considered a good thing from a search engine point of view (because it would be relevant and interesting for the users) to make information pages (or in Scandinavia we would call them “temasider“) about the different car stereo brands, the different models etc. Or how about making the ultimate car stereo history page, showing old car stereos? This might also be a good link baiting strategy, gathering natural links from enthusiasts and maybe even museums with high PageRank (if the page is good, of course).
Shari Thurow says that “the primary goal of an information page is to provide useful information to your target audience. Examples of information pages include tips, set-up instructions, FAQs, and glossaries. […]Information pages reside on your Web server and are a natural part of your W site. In fact, links to information pages tend to be in the main navigation scheme.”
The navigation is a key issue when we talk about doorway pages. If your pages are meant for users, they will be integrated in the navigational structure in some way or another, but not necesserely available from the homepage. If you want customers to find a page, you lead him to it. You don’t hide the links from the users in a sitemap link or a sitemap symbol. The sitemap links and symbols Aleksika and Prioritet used, led to doorway sitemaps, not sitemaps as Google and usability guys recommend.
Shari Thurow actually addresses the doorway sitemap issue in her article. She calls the Aleksika/Prioritet type of sitemap for “hallway pages”: “A hallway page is created specifically to link to doorway pages. A hallway page sounds like a modified site map, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, a hallway page is exactly that – a modified site map that links to doorway pages.”
Read Shari Thurow’s article: How to Spot Search Engine Spam: Doorway Pages
April 27, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Hello Spamcops.
Very interesting articles.
But we need more well done reporting