Using Gateway Pages

The general definition of a gateway page is any page designed and optimized to be an entrance page to your site. A gateway page is also often called a doorway page or hallway page. A hallway page is an entrance page to multiple gateways. The definition of these varies somewhat with the SEO. The bottom line, however, is that the search engines are wary of any page that doesn't have at least one external link pointing to it.

The more restrictive definition of a gateway page is any page designed as an entrance page for your site that has no external or internal link into the page. Search engines don't like these pages and, when found, don't index them and may penalize your site. Since search engines find pages for indexing by following links from other pages already on the search engines, these external links don't exist for the gateway page. Even if you submit a gateway page, all this would do is tell the engines to go find the links. The links don't exist, so the page isn't indexed.

Here some reasons often cited for using gateway pages:

Using gateway pages allows you to build optimized pages for additional keyword phrases and draw traffic to your site using those phrases.
Gateway pages permit optimizing entrance pages to your site for specific search engines.
A gateway page could be used as part of a pay-per-click or other type of campaign to control and monitor the success of the campaign and to target the site entrance more effectively for the campaign.
Off-line advertising can target a gateway page into your site, again permitting the monitoring of your off-line campaign.

Do any of these work? Not really. Without those incoming links, you probably won't get indexed. Most pay-per-click advertising services supported by the search engines specifically forbid the use of gateway pages.

We advise putting at least one link into the desired entrance page. You can do it from your site map if from nowhere else. Also, don't call it a gateway, doorway, or hallway page.

One trick some companies use for resolving this is putting up multiple domains and linking these. For example, in launching a new product you might put it on a separate web site. Google is starting to counter this strategy by using an aging filter for all new sites. New sites are put in a sandbox area for 6-8 months after a temporary good position that lasts only 2-3 weeks. Go ahead with the new domain, but be sure you have a link to it from the old site or it won't be seen much.

So - how do you make it work?

Suppose you sell iPods. Lots of sites sell iPods. How do you get your site to the top of the search engine results? Take a look at this page. It pivots off the keyword phrase "sell more iPods' - a rather hot keyword phrase for someone selling iPods. The only thing here is that this page is selling a book to help someone sell iPods, not an iPod. The page, however, is targeted to a prospective customer's needs.

This iPod page is an entrance page, not a gateway. It has links going into it, it has PageRank(TM) - so the search engines will (and did) pick it up. Get the idea?

See Carl's book on Web Site Promotion and Search Engine Positioning for more...

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