Why You Need a Doorway Page

By Darcy McDonald
Posted Monday, September 27, 2004

Search engines are the single biggest source of traffic for a site. That is, IF you get a top ranking. And make no mistake: that does not happen by accident.

Also, chances are your current site will not rank well, precisely because you've put a lot of work into it. It's ironic, but many "advanced" web building techniques will actually make your pages very difficult for the search engines to recognize.

For example, frames, flash movies, CGI scripts, javascript, applets and image maps are all complete junk to a search engine spider. Not only that, but this sort of thing will actually push your real content further from the top of the page, reducing the relevancy of what the spiders actually do see.

So what to do? Build a plain, stripped down page that contains none of those components (not even tables) and while you're at it, load it up with just the right mix of keywords (not too many) that you want to rank well for. That's called a doorway page.

That page then gets submitted to all the search engines. Then, when people click on it in the engines, there's a link on it to the main page of your site, so it becomes a "doorway" for the visitor.

Of course, you still need to understand how to create a page that has just the right mixture of keywords in all of the different sections of the page (title, headings, meta tags, etc). It can be very difficult to get the right mixture to rank well.

Our site at (http://www.babblebot.com) offers several free tools to help you decide on your targeted keywords to tune in your doorway page. Or, for the impatient, we also offer an automated wizard that will lead you through the process of creating your page. It analyzes your existing site, helps choose targeted keywords, analyzes your competitor's sites, and then produces a page that is highly optimized for your chosen search phrase.

Creating doorway pages is the single best way to get a good ranking. It may seem like a lot of work, but it's becoming necessary as the web grows. The competition for a top ranking is increasing almost exponentially, and the search engines now have so much content that they don't care if they don't have your site.

But you do care! you have to take action to make sure your site is in there and has the top ranking it needs to draw traffic. Some sites report that the engines account for over 86% of all their traffic. Don't miss out on your share!

Get Unlimited Access To Excellent New Search Engine Optimization & Submission Tools at (http://www.babblebot.com)!

About the Author
Darcy MacDonald operates Babblebot, an excellent new site dedicated to search engine submission, ranking, and optimization services.