Re: Transfer pages/gateway pages

From: Read Vanderbilt <rvanderbilt_at_bgrove.com>
Date: Thu 02 Dec 1999 17:10:15 -0800

JOHN SEQUINO WROTE:
> Could someone comment on the pro's and con's of having
> what I believe are transfer pages for one web site.
> By this I mean several pages on different servers with
> different search engine tags, when hit the page will
> transfer you to the real page.

I believe that you are talking about doorway or bridge
pages. This technique can drive traffic to your site by
improving search engine rankings for specific key word
phrases, but it also can cause problems with some
search engines. According to a somewhat aged
searchenginewatch.com report Infoseek, Lycos, Hot Bot
and Excite all consider redirection and gibberish
(commonly used techniques with doorway pages) to be
spam. Another key is relevancy. For example, if you
optimize your doorway page for the phrase "Pamela
Anderson" your web site had better have relevant
content or servers could complain to the search engine.
A good discussion of the pros and cons can be found at
www.searchenginewatch.com, especially its subscribers
section.

If you also are interested in firms that build and
submit doorway pages, SearchBuilder.com seems to be an
especially ethical company. I haven't hired a firm to
do doorway pages yet, but if I do it will be
SearchBuilder ($500 setup plus 25 cents per
clickthrough). They are careful to follow the
recommendations of search engine watch.com and other
authoritative sites, so that you do not run afoul of
the search engines. Or you can spend a significant
chunk of time building doorway pages yourself using Web
Position Gold, an excellent piece of software that also
contains good tools for tracking search engine rankings
and analyzing site traffic.

Good luck with your work!

Read Vanderbilt


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Received on Thu Dec 02 1999 - 19:10:15 CST