Identifying Doorway Pages Which May Harm Search Engine Rankings

Google's search engine rankings have penalized doorway pages for some time. In early 2015, Google took further steps to demote doorway pages in their search engine rankings, which can harm the overall performance of a domain. Site owners that want to avoid penalties will need to identify and either remove or modify any doorway pages that may occur on their website.

Automatically Generated Content

Doorway pages may lean heavily on automatically generated content to push users towards the actual site or towards a landing page. Doorway pages may be generated from "spun" content which looks good to the search engine but not to the user -- and this content will be automatically seeded with certain keywords, especially geographically-targeted keywords. Having a large amount of pages which all "point" the user to a single location in a site is a very clear example of having doorway pages. In general, any time the content has been designed specifically for the search engine rather than the user -- and is designed to get the user to go somewhere -- the page is a "doorway."

Landing Pages With Lean Content
A landing page is not a doorway page, but it can become one if it has lean content. Landing pages are usually content-rich pages that drive users towards conversion through the use of compelling copy and customized content.

But if a landing page has very lean content and is overly keyword-optimized -- particularly with irrelevant or useless keywords -- it can be considered a doorway page. In this situation, the landing page is acting as a 'doorway' to the conversion mechanism.

Automatic User Redirection

The easiest way to identify a doorway page, by far, is if it redirects the user immediately. There should be no need for a page that redirects the user once they have connected to it -- barring some very specific applications. This form of doorway page is also considered a "cloaking" device. The doorway page will usually have content designed to appeal to the search engine and will then immediately direct the consumer to a page that is focused on conversion instead. Though doorway pages have always been known to be detrimental, some site owners may not realize that doorway pages are on their own websites because they are using an e-commerce solution, content management system or other application that operates these doorway pages on their own. A SEO Denver company can help business owners who are concerned that their website may contain doorway pages.