Google recently updated their post on doorway pages and released a blog post detailing those changes as well. There are many names for this particular brand of black-hat SEO; bridge, portal, or gateway pages, more commonly known as doorway pages, are typically created to rank for specific keywords to drive more traffic to the primary website. Doorways oftentimes use redirects to force users to the usable portion of the website, which is a form of cloaking. Many webmasters have created location specific doorway pages which will show up whenever someone searches for their product in a particular location. All of these methods create a very poor user experience. Additionally, your first impression to the user is that of deception and lies, which is no way to start a business relationship (or any relationship for that matter).
Landing Pages vs. Doorway Pages
Doorway pages can easily be confused with landing pages; the latter provide worthwhile content to users, whereas doorways are created specifically for search engines and to trick users into visiting the page only to be funneled deeper within the actual website. Additionally, most landing pages are not unnaturally boosted via unnatural SEO. Google’s algorithm has become smarter (but not sentient…yet) over the past few years, and the modifications they make to it constantly increase its ability to detect spam.
Doorway pages will negatively impact your search rankings with Google, and if the spam is detected, there is the possibility that your website could acquire one of three manual actions from Google:
If you are still using this antiquated black-hat SEO strategy, listen to Smokey the Bear:
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