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Black Hat Series No.5 - Doorway Pages Exposed

Posted by: Andy on 15 Jul 2008 @ 4:56 pm Category: Search Engine Optimisation

This is post #5 in "The Black Hat Series" - a series of blog posts aimed at educating website owners about the promise and pitfalls of Black Hat SEO strategies and techniques.

Over the course of this series, we have outlined some of the Pros and Cons of White Hat vs Back Hat Optimisation Strategies, provided an overview of the various guidelines by the bigger search engines, outlined some of the implications and penalties associated with using questionable optimisation techniques, and even provided some guidance as to what can be done if your site has been penalised.

Now it's time to start taking a much closer look at some of the specific techniques (finally did you say ?) - what are they, how they work, how to recognise these techniques, and (where possible) some actual examples.

Doorway Pages

The first "Black Hat Technique" I am covering is Doorway Pages - not because it is a particularly clever, or sexy method (in fact it is probably one of the most basic and boring techniques)... But because I've recently come across an Australian "SEO" Business, which seems to be using doorway pages as their primary optimisation tool - and rolling it out to hundreds of their clients sites.

Now this technique certainly can be (and has been) effective - but what is of most concern to me, is the complete disregard this Sydney based SEO organisation seem to have for the implications that this could (and is likely to) have on their clients medium to long term website rankings. I don't intend "outing" this firm in this post – but if you are interested, it shouldn't take much detective work to track them down.

I don't know whether the so called SEO professionals using this technique are simply dumb, or just not interested in long term benefits for their clients sites (once they have received their fee of course).

What are Doorway Pages ?

Doorway Pages are an example of one of the very earliest strategies for Search Engine Optimisation, and have been recognised as a Black Hat optimisation technique for quite some time. Google (as a part of their webmaster guidelines) have recently clarified their definition of Doorway pages - according to Google :

"Doorway pages are typically large sets of poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. In many cases, doorway pages are written to rank for a particular phrase and then funnel users to a single destination."

Google then goes on to say

"we frown on practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the ones they selected, and that provide content solely for the benefit of search engines."

and finally :

"Google may take action on doorway sites and other sites making use of these deceptive practice, including removing these sites from the Google index"

- enough said on Google’s attitude to this type, of strategy I think.

How Do Doorway Pages Work

Doorway Pages are often optimised for very specific (sometimes obscure) keyword phrases. They can be on the same or different domain names as the primary target site. They usually interlink, and though these links, provide a "funnel" effect which guides traffic (real live visitors and search spiders alike) to the intended target pages on the "real" website itself.

Because competition for many of these very specific keyword phrases is not so fierce, the Doorway pages sometimes have a better chance at ranking well - often to the frustration of real users who then have to navigate (often via a convoluted route) to get to the information they were really seeking.

Does my site use Doorway Pages ?

Fortunately Doorway Pages are relatively easy to spot (although this does make it even more dangerous if you do decide to implement them). If your site has a large number (possibly a very large number) of pages, typically with large numbers of keywords and little or no other real content - that link and cross link between each other and the "real" content pages on your site - then you are almost certainly using a Doorway Page strategy.

Doorway Page Examples

Below is a (very brief) list of some of the sites that I have found that are currently using this technique - for each site I have listed the URL, an approximate number of "real" pages, and an approximate number of "doorway" pages. Look at the links the footers of the example sites to see the doorway pages.

(note: Although they should have probably know better – and warned their clients - the Web Designers for these sites are not the "SEO agency" that has put in place the Doorway Pages)

www.makwater.com.au	7 real pages	120+ Doorway Pages
www.mcgarrypartners.com.au	18 real pages	2,700+ Doorway Pages
www.solutionsms.com.au	17 Real Pages	1,700+ Doorway pages
www.qhint.com	9 Real Pages	200+ Doorway Pages
www.gelabourhire.com.au	4 Real Pages	750+ Doorway Pages
etc....

and there are hundreds - perhaps thousands of other sites using the exact same strategy. Try this query to see more - Scarily, most of the example sites listed above don’t even seem to use any of the simpler, much safer, and often more effective White Hat SEO strategies that will very likely give their sites sustainable, ongoing ranking and traffic improvements.

If you are aware any "unscrupulous" SEO firms using techniques that you believe are outside the Search Engine Guidelines, please feel free to let us know.... In an effort to do our little bit to clean up the Australian SEO Industry, we'd love to research them further - and if appropriate provide examples of other dodgy activities in future posts in this series.

 

 

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