A doorway linking is a page on your website designed to rank for specific search queries. Often, website owners create lots of pages trying to rank for a particular keyword or phrase in search results. Generally, doorway pages are a "doorway" to the main content and are not useful at all for users.
Sometimes, this trick redirects to another page, and when the user clicks on it, the meta refreshes and redirects to another page very quickly. However, Google is dealing with these tactics pretty well so far.
Creating doorway links has long been frowned upon as one of the most malicious black-hat SEO tactics. The name 'doorway' comes from the tactic used by black hat SEO masters, just to get a foot in the door with search engines.
Why should you get rid of low-quality "doorway linking"?
Google focuses on enhancing the user experience and providing better, higher-quality search results, so the least you can expect from it is to get rid of every black hat SEO trick that comes it is the way. One of the most technologically advanced companies with businesses spread across various verticals, Google is not short of technological resources to achieve its goals.
You must come out clean before it's too late, especially if you're relying on landing pages as one of your traffic-generating strategies. In fact, Google has been working to get rid of doorway linking since 2015 and has largely cleaned up the mess. However, if you've been lucky (so far), you'll need to think more clearly before it's too late and you'll be blacklisted by Google.
How to identify doorway linking on your website?
If you sell a specific product or service and randomly create pages for several cities, just to funnel more traffic. Also, without putting any useful content on location-specific pages, which the reader can benefit from.
If you have created specific pages on your website with similar content that link to the main page and you purchase paid links to these pages with specific anchor text. This is a clear example of anchor text spam and all these pages will be flagged as doorway linking.
If your website doesn't follow a simple hierarchy and ranks for specific variations of a keyword or keyword phrase without providing any real value to the reader.
A page that uses a 'location' without any real business presence, just to entertain visitors through search results. In fact, in most cases, these pages have nothing to do with location. Google, however, disapproves of this and considers it misleading and spam.
A page that mentions a keyword but confuses search engines has nothing to do with it other than channeling traffic from search results to their website. So, it won't fool human readers and show up in the form of an increased bounce rate. Sometimes, bots are tricked into showing these pages in search results but they will eventually figure out what you are doing and you may even face an algorithmic penalty for creating doorway linking.
You have a website that has optimized elements but redirects to another site with original content However, Google has removed most of these redirecting doorway pages.
You have a webpage that is optimized for search engines but has no useful content for the reader, which is relevant to the keyword it is targeting. Since this whole process results in a poor user experience, Google is taking notice and making algorithmic changes to get rid of it.
A blank page is created to drive traffic to a specific section of your eCommerce store to increase conversions through organic search.
What if you can't or don't want to get rid of doorway pages?
The only thing you can do here is to avoid deleting doorway pages before Google tracks you down and penalizes you.
Invest in some great content. Load your empty doorway linking with high-quality original content and let them drive traffic to your site. By doing so, you contribute to Google's goal of providing a good user experience and converting your traffic-generating web pages into legitimate web pages with original content.
If you're using a redirect, you can always add your actual website (to which you redirect) as an external link, and if the reader wants to navigate to it, the reader will. But if you don't take action now, you may have to suffer the consequences in the near future.
Why do search engines hate doorway pages?
Doorway linking violates one of Google's guidelines, which requires consistency Because the data the search bot sees and what the reader sees on the front page are inconsistent, Google doesn't allow it.
Doorway linking provides no value to the reader, resulting in a poor user experience. Google wants to get you the most relevant results as quickly as possible and is working hard to make it happen
Readers miss out on websites with useful content because a low-quality website uses a handful of black hat SEO techniques to get to the top.
Abusive redirects appear to be a huge turn-off for Google.
Speed up your website to enhance the user experience and you can do this by using a minimalistic design and reliable web hosting. Using a responsive website design compatible with most devices and browsers will definitely help you rank better.
Doorway linking is innocuous-looking HTML pages that hardly contain any content Although it crawls the spiders, it is a short-term solution to generating traffic.
