Website Optimization with Doorway pages

If you want a website, you obviously want lots of internet traffic to flock to your site. It will be very helpful if this stream of traffic can be "targeted" traffic as well. It means that your visitors are looking for what you have to offer!

There are different approaches to achieve your goal. Advertising in existing electronic magazines (ezines) is one way. You can combine such a campaign with building up a mail list of your own. You simply ask your website visitors to join your mail list so that you can keep them informed about new developments on your website. Cozahost will gladly assist you with setting up a mail list for your purposes.

Another way of creating traffic is to use doorway pages.

What is a "doorway page" exactly?

To arrive at a full understanding of doorway pages we must start with a bit of background information.

Almost 400 million people use the internet daily. Almost 90% of them use search engines - such as Google for instance - to find what they are looking for. The search engine offers you an indexed list of a couple of thousand possibilities - or even a few million in some cases - to choose from. To have your website on top of that list of references can be quite something! Just to be in the top 10 positions is an enormous achievement and can be extremely profitable.

How does the engine decide who is first, second and so on?

Well, powerful software scans billions of web pages of the internet constantly. It "reads" and indexes all the different pages of all the websites (Google - for example - indexes 4.2 billion pages at time of writing).

The search engine scanning software is also known as a "crawler, spider or robot." The crawlers can complete this massive scanning task in about 90 days - then the whole procedure starts all over again.

An obvious question now is: how does the robot "read" a page?

It counts the words and phrases and then calculates a "density profile" for that page. "Density" in this sense simply means that if the word "fruit" and the phrase "fruit juice" are repeated a lot of times - much more than other words and phrases - the search robot will regard this page as possible good candidate for a high ranking in its final list. These "high density words" are known as keywords and the phrases as keyword phrases or keyword combinations. If the webmaster gains a good understanding of this procedure and write a page accordingly, the particular page is said to be optimized.

Do you remember the little song from the golden classic movie The Sound of Music that goes: "When you read you begin with a-b-c, when you sing you begin with doh-re-me"... and so on? Let me tell you this, gentle reader: "When you read you begin with a-b-c, when you sing you begin with doh-re-me, when you start developing your website, you begin with keywords, keywords, keywords!"

When talking about doorway pages, the talking is all about KEYWORDS; BUT if you attempt to "fool" the search engine by artificially loading your pages with keywords - you will achieve the opposite of what you set out to do. First, foremost and above all, your pages MUST CONTAIN VALUABLE INFORMATION.

Keywords

Simply a repetition of certain keywords, huh? Be careful!

One: If the search engine comes across a page that reads: "fruit, fruit juice, fruit, fruit, fruit juice....(and goes on like this up to about 150 words)...." then it will recognize the density, but it will also immediately regard this as garbage and "spamdexing" because of the obvious attempt to fool the search engine.

There is no useful content on the page. In such cases the search engine will simply penalize the page by giving it a very low ranking or by banning it from indexing.

The search engine wants "to see" rich content that will be useful and meaningful to its own users.

Two: The second problem is that readers are not fools you know. Even if you spread or scatter keywords all over the page, they will immediately sense when the text is somewhat artificial or "forced"... To write keyword rich content that satisfy both the search robot and the reader can therefore turn out be a real challenge for the webmaster.

Three: Then again, any keyword won't do. You must select optimized keywords for the job. It means that you have to find popular keywords that the search engine user will most likely type in there. How do you identify such popular keywords? One great source: Aleksika. For $41 per year you will be allowed to use their database... and you will have more popular keywords that you can handle! WordTracker is another valuable source.

So, a Doorway page is...

A quick summary of what we have covered so far - I guess - might be in order: a doorway page is...

• an "optimized" page designed in such a way that the search robot will find it hard not to give it a "nice" rating
• a page that is designed to put carefully chosen keywords of keyword phrases on a pedestal
• a page using a popular keyword to name it (using the "name tag")
• a page describing the contents for the search engine (using the "meta tag")
• a short, content-rich page with keyword all over the page to create the desired but "unforced" density

Looking at this list, you might start thinking: "Well, this is a simple recipe..." You are quite right! Just stay with me now...

"When you sing you begin with Doh-Re-Me..."

True? Yes! When you develop your web pages you begin with...? Keyword-Keyword-Keyword. Am I repeating myself? Yes, for a specific reason. You do not begin your website planning with a R14,000 budget to "Flash-flash-flash". Bells and whistles will not sell your goodies. Targeted traffic to your website will. High ranking search engine pages will. Doorway pages will...

When developing your website, start off by thinking about:

• keywords
• strategic placing of doorway pages
• focus on text rather then "looks" - visitors want information and not "movies"
• fast loading pages - about 7 seconds loading time (Fact: Slow loading pages are to be blamed for an annual loss of an estimated $1.3 billion)

Naturally - apart from doorway pages - you must have your "main" pages as well. On those pages you can show your visitors all the fantastic things that you have cooked up for them and why your product or service is so special and why they must open their wallets for you. BUT - your planning must not start with the "inside-of-your-shop" stuff. You must start your planning with the "doors-to-the-inside"

Forget about the old way of thinking that the "home" page is the ONLY entrance to the "shop" (website). Think the "mall-shopping-centre" way. Entrance No 1, No 2...... the more the better! START the PLANNING of your WEBPAGE DESIGN with the placing of the DOORS! Pages that are optimized, clean, simple, fast loading and extremely effective. The search engines would like you very much for it and will reward you with loads of traffic rushing to your place.

And... do not place obstacles in the doors Obstacles?

Here is a no-no list for you doorway pages:

• no flashing
• no or low graphics
• no JavaScript (if you don't know what this one is, be happy)
• pop-up windows (your visitors hate them...)
• frames
• image maps

In some or other way these "features" will work against you doorway pages. Avoid them.

They agreed that it was.

So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. He then asked the students again if the jar was full.

They agreed it was.

The professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He then asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous - yes.

The professor then produced a bottle of red wine from under the table and proceeded to pour the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand.

The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The rocks are the important things - your family, your partner, your health, your children - things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else - the small stuff.

"If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued "there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out dancing. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and take out the garbage."

"Take care of the rocks first - the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the wine represented.