I never thought I\u2019d have to write a blog explaining what doorway pages are in the context of search engine optimisation and why they are a very poor idea these days. However, I\u2019m prompted to raise awareness again after a client was recently poached by another company offering the \u2018moon on a stick\u2019 for his Google rankings.<\/p>\n
The backdrop is quite disappointing for our SEO team particularly as the website is quite new. In a few short months we had elevated the client\u2019s ranking positions so that he was in the top three for many important searches in his competitive location in London. Several key search terms were actually top. His website traffic had also increased markedly but unfortunately he still elected to move on the back of promises made by another company and incorrect interpretation of data.<\/p>\n
In terms of his website enquiries, these had also ramped up very quickly as the Google positions improved, however he had noted a small reduction as the summer holiday period approached. This is not atypical and there will always be blips, some of them outside of a marketing company\u2019s direct control. For example, general cost of living rises alongside non-competitive treatment fees can be difficult to counter.<\/p>\n
As part of our closing discussions we advised that step changes in Google traffic<\/a> were now not possible, simply because he was already very well placed in the search rankings. Incremental improvement would be possible but not at the rate of the first five or six months.<\/p>\n It seems that the new company advised that his website could also rank top for locations outside of his area, but of course, this is not really possible due to Google\u2019s localisation policies. All of this was duly explained but it appears the promises made elsewhere were irresistible.<\/p>\n Over the last 6 months or so we have been implementing new cookie and general tracking control features on our client\u2019s websites. This is effectively mandatory and you can read more about it in our recent blogs. The upshot of this implementation is that website users can easily opt out of being tracked as soon as they land on a website which then knocks through to analytics data etc.<\/p>\n Step changes in \u201capparent\u201d website usage can result as you might expect and even though this is easy enough to explain, it still causes unease for some website owners. It appears that this also happened here, so even through it was simple to demonstrate that website traffic had not decreased by looking at raw server data, the client was still fixated on changes in his Google Analytics data which of course was reflecting the new tracking controls.<\/p>\n The result of all of this was the client elected to move unfortunately, but what is worse is the techniques he revealed that his new supplier proposes to use \u2013 and this bring me on to \u201cdoorway pages\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As part of our closing discussion, the client identified that the new supplier wanted to flood his website with new content, so supplementary new pages about the “same treatments but written to include lots of additional keywords”. Hearing this made my heart sink somewhat as it will for anyone reading this who has an understanding of SEO.<\/p>\n Doorway pages are pages written with the sole intention of trying to manipulate Google and are formally well outside of Google\u2019s publishing guidelines and hence their use can and likely will be penalised. They are also generally counter-productive these days, simply because Google is far more adept at identifying the subject of a web page rather than specifically looking for keyword patterns.<\/p>\n So not only is the technique increasingly pointless, it\u2019s dangerous too. I was somewhat shocked to hear the client saying all of this but I guess some SEO companies are still stuck trying to use techniques from 7 or 8 years ago and seemingly with little regard for their client\u2019s websites.<\/p>\nThe effect of Google Consent Mode<\/h3>\n
Doorway pages and why you should not use them<\/h3>\n