By http://www.searchenginestrategies.biz

Introduction to Doorway Pages

A well built doorway page system can provide tremendous advantages to a web site owner. It will allow you to maximize your web traffic by targeting multiple keywords and keyword phrases.

The overall theme with a master doorway system is simply the use of keywords. The most difficult part for many to understand is how doorway - (often called hallway or mirror pages), really work. By themselves, they are not anything magical. A doorway page is no more effective then a standard optimized web page. Actually, when examined by itself, a doorway page is really nothing more then a standard web page. What makes a web page a doorway page is how it is used. That’s it. It's the application.

I have read countless inaccurate online reports about doorway pages, and the material printed in books is even worse. Using doorway pages properly allows you to achieve a high ranking position on as many keywords as you wish. Of course, the problem is building the doorway pages. It can be very time consuming, and if they are not built properly, they can really screw up your site. In this section, we are going to give you a complete breakdown on every aspect of building doorway pages. Some of these techniques require some advanced HTML programming knowledge.

One option is using software to create your doorway pages. There are a number of software companies selling what are called "doorway page generators". Most are generating very poor HTML pages that you yourself will have to upload and install in the right location. One piece of software however that is extremely powerful and sits far above the others is a product called SpyderOpts.

This software product does virtually everything for you when it comes to making doorway pages. We really liked this product - it completely downloads your website, creates all of your doorway pages and then uploads them exactly where they need to be. The only downfall is the price. Its not cheap, but if you are looking to save time, check it out. The site is www.spyderopts.com.

The bottom line however is that anything you can do with search enginne optimization software, you can do yourself. Lets take a closer look how a doorway page actually works. For example, lets say that your web site sells widgets.

As you know from our basic optimizing strategies, every page can only be optimized for one keyword. If your site has three widget pages, you only have three keywords or key phrases to optimize your site with. If you have a red widget page, you will probably optimize that page the term “red widget”. But what about people searching for a key phrase like “red widgets on sale”? If you want that search term to be found, you will have to either create a new web page for that term or create a doorway page.

Lets now build a doorway page and show how and where to install it.

How to Hide Links

The very first thing that you must learn before you start to build a doorway page system is how to create hidden links.

As you will soon learn, using hidden links is a vital part of using doorway pages. Without them, a doorway system will not work. These hidden links will join together the doorway pages that we will soon create. If you do not want a link to be found, the best place to hide it is at the bottom of your pages. Because of the remote location, most people very rarely discover them. If you leave some space between your last item on the page and the hidden link, most people will not be exploring past your content.

Even if a visitor finds it, they will have no idea what they stumbled upon and will never figure out what you have done. The link location does not matter to spiders - they will still find it and go to our master directory page to index its content.

There are two ways to create a hidden link- as a text link or as a graphics link.

Text Links

Once again, hidden text links should be located at the bottom of your page.

This will require you to make the text a color that is very near to your background color. This way it will blend in with the background color and be nearly invisible. This is simple to accomplish, as text links can be created in every color possible. As specified earlier, we suggest you use only graphics for your regular navigation links.

When you use a link at the bottom of a page, it will have no bearing on any of our earlier concerns. It will not show up on search engine results or effect your rankings. Going back to the color, if you were to make your text link the same exact color as your background color, you would not be able to see it. If your back ground color is white and your text link is white, it will be completely invisible.

There is one slight possible dilemma with this. Same-color text is considered by many search engine to be spam, and may result in a penalty for your site.

It would be easy for me to jump on the misinformation bandwagon and say that if you use identical color text, you will get banned. Many optimizing experts are claiming this. I myself cannot prove or disprove this claim. Especially when there are multiple examples of sites using same-color text and still ranking. Using identical color text used to work well and people are still doing it and getting away with it.

I have always tried to approach web optimizing from a technical stand point. If it works, there is a reason. There is no such thing as web magic. If there is a problem, there is a solution. If search engines are banning sites for identical text, there is a way around it.

To defeat this possible problem, I have created a color combination that can be used without worries. Why take chances? When a web site page is built, the option of what hex color you want to use is available. Each color is made with six letter or number codes that specify to your web browser the color.

Pure white is this letter code:   #FFFFFF

What I have done is create colors that are very, very close to the pages background color. This sounds easy but is not that simply. Allow me to explain.  

What you will find is that whenever you try to choose a color very close to another, it will always start with the same color code. For example, if you use a white background color, almost all other light colors start with the F code also.

If search engines have programmed their spiders to look for identical colors, they must do it by color code. There is no other way. A spider has no other way of telling what color a page or text is other then reading the color code that exists in the HTML code of the website.

The best way to be safe is to make sure your first color code out of the six is different. Most every web site uses white as a background. One color that we found that works very well on white is this combo:   #EDFAE6

I have used this color code with no problems and have found it to be nearly impossible to see. Your link will be totally hidden to the naked eye but spiders will find it and index whatever page it points to.

If a search engine has programmed its spider to recognize same color text, they will never see this combination on white. I have used it successfully and have had no problems. If you are a programmer, you can develop your own hex color comination if you'd like. Just follow my guidelines to be safe. If you are not, just use a white background and tell your web builder to use the color code we are using.

There is a much easier alternative to all of this in my opinion - making your hidden links graphics.

Graphics Links  

If you remember, a spider will follow any type of link, whether its a text link or a graphic link. Earlier, we built our regular web links out of graphics only.

This prevented the spiders from reading the text and using the words as keywords. You can eliminate the whole same-color text problem by just making the hidden link a graphic link.

I usually always make my hidden links a graphic at the the bottom of the page. The best part here is that you can make the graphic exactly the same color as your background with no problems. A search engine spider will only see it as a graphic. A spider cannot tell what color the graphic is, only what type of graphic it is. I have used this method very successfully.  

I usually make my graphic a small box, the same color as the background, or transparent. I will make it a GIF image at about 127 X 11 pixels. Both of the styles of hidden links can be seen if a person passes over the link with their mouse.

This is highly unlikely, but can happen. To avoid this, place some white space in between your last piece of web site information and your hidden link. It will just look like you have some white space on the bottom of your page.

Now that you have an idea how to create this hidden link, it is time to start building our master doorway system. We will be using our hidden links on virtually every doorway page.

Choosing your Search Terms

The next phase of creating doorway pages is to choose what key phrases you want to promote. For my imaginary widget web site, I have decided to gain much more traffic on my red widget page.  

I want my widget web site to rank number one on a number of important search terms for red widgets. Choosing what keywords you may want should be fairly simple. If you remember, when we first started to build our web pages, I asked you to choose as many keywords about your company or product line as you could. If you did this, you should have a fairly good list.  

You can pull from your existing list or use any key terms you wish. I could do it for all of my other widgets, but for our example, I will only do it for the red widgets. Here is a list of the red widget keywords I have chosen to work with.

red widgets online, buy red widgets, red widgets for sale, wholesale red widgets, red widget web sites, red widget retailers, red widget stores, red widgets, red widgets products, red widget accessories.

These are all the keyword phrases for my red widget page. The basic idea here is to come up with combinations that people will be searching for in regards to your product line. I have chosen ten key terms so I will be building a ten page doorway system.

I could have chosen one hundred key phrases if I wanted to. Ten will be good enough for our widget web site example. Now that we have the key phrases we want, its time to move on and start to build the actual doorway pages.

Creating the Doorway Pages

So far, we covered the hidden links and choosing our search terms. Now we are ready to build doorway pages. Eventually, they will all tie together resulting in a functional doorway system. Out of my red widget keywords, lets use “red widgets online” for our example of our first doorway page. To create this doorway page, you should select one of your regular web pages from your site. However, make sure that the page you choose has navigation links to your other pages. At minimum, it must have a visible navigation button leading to your home page.

Change the pages' keyword.
Start by changing the pages keywords. Instead of using the keyword phrase red widgets, use red widgets online in every exact place that you used your original keyword phrase.

What I have done here is change every keyword phrase from red widget to red widget online. It really does not matter if it reads a little odd. This is one of the small prices that you will have to pay. The key is to get visitors to your site, period. Once there, they will move from this page and never even know that they came into your site from a doorway page. If they try to go back to the red widget page, they will only find the regular “normal” red widget page that reads correctly.

Change the URL address.
You must of course change the pages URL. In this example, we are making the doorway page for red widget. After the .com, place your pages' keyword or key phrase. If your home page is www.widgetwarehouse.com, then your new doorway page is going to be "widgetwharehouse.com/red-widget-online.html."

Change the title tag
Change the title tag to your new keyword for that doorway page.

Change your meta keywords tag and meta description tags.
This part is simple. Just exchange the new keyword phrase with the old one wherever you used it. In your meta keywords, just use the new keyword phrase, "red widget online" in place of the previous keyword.

You have now created a doorway page. It that’s simple. This page is nearly identical to the original page except for the keyword and tag changes. Like I said earlier, its how you use a web page that makes it a doorway page. This brings us to our next task at hand, creating a site map page.

Creating the Site Map

Now that we have created the doorway pages, we need to set up a site map page. Because we do not want visitors to stumble upon our site map page, we are going to hide the link that leads to it. You already know how to create a hidden link so that will be easy to do. For now, we need to build our site map page first, then we will add the link.

You will use the same exact page as your home page for your site map page. Once again, we dont have to do a lot of work here because we are using an existing page. Starting with a copy of your home page, here is what you will need to do.

Change the URL.
You will need to name the URL "sitemap" or something similar, simply for organizational purposes.

widgetwarehouse.com/sitemap.html

You can really call this anything you want. Just don’t place a keyword in the URL if possible. We do not want this page getting any attention.

Change the title tag.
Do not use any kind of keyword or any words that have something to do with your product line in the title tag. Remember, this page is not to be found. The last thing you want to do is name your title tag something like, "red widget site map page".

Delete the meta keyword tags and description tag.
Delete all meta keywords and delete the description tag completely. Once again, this page is not to be found so we do not use any elements that may help it appear on a search engine somewhere.

Delete the body text.
Delete all of the body text. The page should be completely clean other then the graphic links. When the page is clean, you will place all of the links to your doorway pages. It's that simple.

Adding the Site Map Link

Our next step is to now add the site map link to our imaginary widget home page.

This will allow the search engine spiders to visit and index whatever links we place on the site map page. If you have not already figured it out yet, we are going to be placing our doorway pages on our site map. We will get to that part soon. For now, lets tie the site map page to the home page.

To do this, we need to make a hidden link that will only be seen by the visiting search engine spiders. You should already know how to create a hidden link, so we will not spend any time on this. If your are unsure, refer back to the how to create hidden links on this site. Just like I told you on the hidden link section, place your hidden link at the bottom of the page.

You can use a text link or graphic link, its your choice. Once that’s done, you are ready to add your doorway pages.

How to Make Doorway Pages  

It’s now time to add the doorway pages to our site map page. This is a simple process. We will create a link to each doorway page on our site map. This is the reason for having a site map. We need the spiders to find our new doorway pages.  

We also need the spiders to be able to index the doorway pages for their keywords. Because we may have many doorway pages, we use the site map as a link directory to them all. 

On the site map, you can have a link to as many doorway pages as you wish. You can place them any way you wish. Once you do this, an indexing spider will arrive at your home page, follow the link to the site map and then follow the links to your doorway pages. These pages will be found by every spider that visits your site. At this point, we are getting very close to being finished. 

There are a few more finishing touches that must be done to complete this process. What we want to do now is place a hidden link on ever single doorway page back to the site map. This is very important and if it is not done, your sitemap will not be indexed properly. This link must be hidden, unlike the links on your site map.  

You should now be able to add as many doorway pages as you wish to your site map. To a visitor coming to your home page, these doorway page links will be invisible. However, you can create as many doorway pages coming into your site as you see fit. If you sell red widgets, you can create 20 pages using combinations of the word red widget.

You will then have 20 entry points into your site for one product. Once they get to the doorway page, they can move around your site by clicking on your navigation links. This is why it was extremely important for you to make sure that your doorway pages have navigation links on them. This way the visitor can view all of your pages seamlessly.