June 18, 2004

Thou shall not use Doorway or Gateway pages
You should never even think of using doorway or gateway pages, since they are frowned upon by most search engines. If you implement any kind of software or program that needs to know the IP address of a search engine robot, you are making use of spam tactics that will have your site penalized or banned. Gateway pages serve different pages to search engines than they do to real human visitors, which is a big No-No in the SEO industry!

Some people suggest ‘trusted feeds’ or XML feeds or similar variations. Depending on the exact nature of such implementations, such techniques could be accepted, if certain basic conditions are met. But in almost all the cases I have seen, doorway (or gateway) pages are a bad idea and you should always stay away from them. To give you an example of how doorway pages are hated by the search engines, on January 25, Google actually changed most of their IP addresses in many of its data centers, as ammunition against this sort of practice.

SEO Commandment Number Seven:

Thou shall build the best site you can
Last week, I wrote an article about the importance of usability in any website. If new visitors visit your site in good numbers but then leave just as fast, there is something very wrong with your site! High rankings won’t compensate for a site that has little usability features. Does your site take too long to download? Did you know that even today, about 80% of people are connected to the Internet using slow dialup modem phone lines? This is especially true in rural areas and in many parts of Europe.

Did you know that if your menu system isn’t clear or if your homepage fails to give the slightest clue as to what your website has to offer, they will leave faster than you can say goodbye!

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Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2004

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