By Yelena Shapiro with Etelka Lehoczky

What are doorway pages?
Doorway pages are pages specially optimized for one search engine and 1-3 keywords. They are also known as "gateway," "bridge," "entry," "jump" or "supplemental" pages. You can achieve higher search engine rankings by tailoring doorway pages to conform to each engine's unique ranking formula.

Doorway pages stand on their own, separate from the rest of a site. They usually feature a logo, some text and a link that encourages visitors to enter the site proper.

Why are doorway pages important?
Doorway pages provide webmasters with an opportunity to rank high for any keyword with any search engine. They're a must for sites with content that's typically overlooked by search engines, such as frames, dynamic content, multimedia files and large graphics. But other sites can benefit from doorway pages as well.

Aren't doorway pages spam?
Doorway pages have gotten a bad name from webmasters who created thousands of them loaded with meta refresh tags, invisible keywords and same text. If your site doesn't employ these spam elements, most search engines won't penalize you for using a moderate number of doorway pages.

Create effective doorway pages
Effective doorway pages use only 1-3 keywords each. If you use more, your pages' effect will be diluted. Pick your three most important keywords and optimize with them for the top 5 search engines. Don't overdo -- too many doorway pages can be easily detected and banned.

Never use doorway pages for directories
Directories, which use human editors to review web sites, frown on doorway pages. You risk being blacklisted if you submit a doorway page to a directory.

Avoid spam
Learn what tactics each search engine considers spam and refrain from using them for those doorway pages.

An Overview

Doorway Pages:

• Can help your site rank high for any keyword in any engine

• Should be optimized for one keyword, one engine

• Should be tailored to each engine's specifications

• Should never be used for directories

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