Doorway Page

Doorway pages are bridge pages between Google and the actual website. They are optimized only for ranking and redirect users. Google views them as Black Hat SEO – risk: loss of ranking or deindexing.

Behind the term "Doorway Page" is a page created and positioned between the search engine and the actual website. It is often referred to as a bridge page. The goal of Doorway Pages is to communicate the SEO relevance of a website to search engines and to direct users to the actual page after a redirection. The thematic background of Doorway Pages looks for example like this: A website is programmed with Flash and offers animations, effects, and sounds that appeal to the visitor. However, for search engine optimization, Flash is not beneficial since search engines like Google can make little use of multimedia content in terms of their ranking factors. They tend to prefer other pages with more editorial content. To still rank well with a page in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), website operators use a so-called Doorway Page. On these bridge pages are the information and content desired by the search engine, including relevant keywords. Since the Doorway Page redirects the visitor to the main page after only a few seconds, such pages often forgo elaborate design and advertising banners and the like. Videos and graphics are also rarely used for a bridge page. The focus of a Doorway Page is clearly on search engine optimized text. However, a Doorway Page has nothing to do with high-quality content and good search engine optimization.

With bridge pages, one does not have good chances in SEO.

The doorway page usually appears in connection with the so-called cloaking technique. This refers to a method where visitors and web crawlers are shown different pages under the same URL. A page is delivered for the user and another for the search engine. The search engine Google excludes cloaking from its quality guidelines, according to which, like other black hat SEO measures, it can lead to the exclusion of pages from the index. From the perspective of search engines, bridge pages should also be avoided, as they are not considered to be of value. This is because the doorway page merely "bridges" by reproducing the contents of the main page and does not reveal any real benefit to the user. If such violations against Google's webmaster guidelines are detected, the pages will be removed from the index. Similarly, the website must expect partial significant ranking loss due to manual actions by Google. Therefore, one should generally refrain from black hat SEO such as using a bridge page. There are better methods to optimize a page.

The alternative to the Doorway Page: the landing page in search engine optimization

One way to gain traffic for a website, appease search engines with good SEO, and impress users is through so-called landing pages as part of search engine optimization. They also act as an entry point to a website but differ from doorway pages, among other things, in structure, content, and the utility of the page. Landing pages are used to address the needs of target audiences. Through target-specific content, graphics, and similar elements, visitors are encouraged to independently navigate to the main website. This website is merely linked and, unlike doorway pages, is not automatically accessed through a redirect. In terms of search engine optimization, landing pages are considered a modern technique to act in an SEO-relevant manner, provide users with added value, and generate traffic for one's website.