Search Engine Optimization 101: Create High-Ranking Doorway Pages
| Category: Search Engines - Keywords | Date: 2003-06-12 |
Since the main page of your site wont rank high for every set of keywords you want, youll end up submitting multiple pages from your site. There are two special kinds of pages, called doorways and bridges, that can provide a little boost to your search engine rankings. They do this by allowing you to focus on additional keywords beyond those on your main page, or even focusing on the same keywords as your main page in ways that you couldnt do otherwise. You will often see "doorway" and "bridge" used interchangeably on other sites, but the definitions we use will hopefully make more sense to you.
For our purposes here, a doorway page is any page on your site that makes sense as an entry point for this site, the home page and the entry pages for the four main sections (Marketing, Search Engines, Improve Your Site, Toolkit) are also doorway pages. Even the articles, in this sense, are considered doorway pages. Your goal with a doorway page is to have it rank high for a particular keyword or phrase, using all of the methods weve defined in this section.
A bridge page is different from a doorway page. Bridge pages are set up solely to fool the search engines, by cramming keywords into a single page. This page is just a "bridge" between a search engine (in many cases, it will be targeted at a single search engine) and the rest of your site. When a visitor clicks on the link from a search engine, they come to the bridge page, and then (you hope) they click through to your site.
In the past, it was possible to use a special META tag, called a "refresh" tag, to automatically redirect visitors from the bridge page to the site. Nowadays, search engines will not index pages with refresh tags, to prevent such tactics. In response to this, many web site operators use a "bait and switch" strategy, where they create a bridge page, submit it to the search engines, then replace it with another page as soon as its been indexed. This allows them to get high rankings for a page loaded with keywords, then replace it with the page they want visitors to see. Another reason for pulling this "bait and switch" strategy is to prevent other sites from "ripping off" the META tags and content from a high-ranking page by changing the tags out as soon as the page is indexed, you ensure that anyone who tries to copy your META tags will get the phony version.
In our opinion, creating and submitting doorway pages is just common sense. All of the doorway pages we submit are highly focused portals, through which all of our sites relevant content is available. Theres no reason you shouldnt do the same thing. We dont use any bridge pages, though, because it just doesnt seem honest to us. Theyre just another trick to fool the search engines. As they say, your mileage may vary if you are desperate for high rankings, a bridge page may be the only way to pull it off.
About the Author
Dan Thies is the author of "Search Engine Fast Start!", a concise guide to positioning your site with the new breed of search engines. Visit cannedbooks.com
dan@cannedhelp.com
http://www.cannedbooks.com
For our purposes here, a doorway page is any page on your site that makes sense as an entry point for this site, the home page and the entry pages for the four main sections (Marketing, Search Engines, Improve Your Site, Toolkit) are also doorway pages. Even the articles, in this sense, are considered doorway pages. Your goal with a doorway page is to have it rank high for a particular keyword or phrase, using all of the methods weve defined in this section.
A bridge page is different from a doorway page. Bridge pages are set up solely to fool the search engines, by cramming keywords into a single page. This page is just a "bridge" between a search engine (in many cases, it will be targeted at a single search engine) and the rest of your site. When a visitor clicks on the link from a search engine, they come to the bridge page, and then (you hope) they click through to your site.
In the past, it was possible to use a special META tag, called a "refresh" tag, to automatically redirect visitors from the bridge page to the site. Nowadays, search engines will not index pages with refresh tags, to prevent such tactics. In response to this, many web site operators use a "bait and switch" strategy, where they create a bridge page, submit it to the search engines, then replace it with another page as soon as its been indexed. This allows them to get high rankings for a page loaded with keywords, then replace it with the page they want visitors to see. Another reason for pulling this "bait and switch" strategy is to prevent other sites from "ripping off" the META tags and content from a high-ranking page by changing the tags out as soon as the page is indexed, you ensure that anyone who tries to copy your META tags will get the phony version.
In our opinion, creating and submitting doorway pages is just common sense. All of the doorway pages we submit are highly focused portals, through which all of our sites relevant content is available. Theres no reason you shouldnt do the same thing. We dont use any bridge pages, though, because it just doesnt seem honest to us. Theyre just another trick to fool the search engines. As they say, your mileage may vary if you are desperate for high rankings, a bridge page may be the only way to pull it off.
About the Author
Dan Thies is the author of "Search Engine Fast Start!", a concise guide to positioning your site with the new breed of search engines. Visit cannedbooks.com
dan@cannedhelp.com
http://www.cannedbooks.com
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