17 replies to this topic

[Bob Collett]

They are search engine spam and can get a website penalized or banned.

Jill
I see a lot of discussion about doorway pages. If I have a sports website, and I created 6 pages with a lot of keyword specific content or each of 6 different sports. My home page links to each specific page, and conversely, each page links back to my home page. I also have a general sports page with some general content, that links to each of the 6 sports specific pages (football, soccer, etc.)

Are these considered doorway pages?

[Randy]

I'm not Jill, but...

It sort of depends upon the implementation Bob. If the pages are useful to and add true value for your visitors I wouldn't categorize them as doorway pages. They'd be more along the lines of Landing pages to me. Semantics, I know.

But putting what you call the pages put aside for the moment, the key is if those pages are going to be part of your normal navigation and will be useful for the real people visiting your site. If they are, you're okay. They're just another page that is targeting a certain phrase or set of phrases. If you don't care whether real people get to the pages or not, or heaven forbid don't want real people to be able to get to them from other pages of your site, then you're getting into riskier territory.

[Jill]

Jill
I see a lot of discussion about doorway pages. If I have a sports website, and I created 6 pages with a lot of keyword specific content or each of 6 different sports. My home page links to each specific page, and conversely, each page links back to my home page. I also have a general sports page with some general content, that links to each of the 6 sports specific pages (football, soccer, etc.)

Are these considered doorway pages?

They sound more like just pages of your website, assuming you've written them to be useful to your visitor and actually want them to find them.