Doorway Pages
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.
Four: When you
are thus far, you also need to name your page correctly. The very best is to use
your keyword
for the name of the doorway page. How do you "name" your page in such a way
that the search engine robot can read it? This requires a bit of HTML knowledge. The
<name> TAG (and the <meta> TAG - giving the robot a short description of the
contents of your page) will take care of this. If you are not HTML "literate,"
please do not quit! It is a simple procedure and
Cozahost will help you out in no time!
(Note: FrontPage users need only right click on a page, select "Page
properties" from the menu and type the page title in the space provided)
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.
What about an Example of a Doorway
Setup?
OK! Let's say that I am a person
living near a rose farm and I know something about flower preservation. I decide to dry
roses and selling it to on a global scale. Packaging is no problem and once preserved it
will keep its fresh look at least two years. In fact, my method is so unique that you
actually have to smell the preserved rose to distinguish it from a fresh rose. I also know
that florists pay high prices for this product and I can easily make a 100% profit.
Now I need a website to market my
"niche" product.
Where do I start? A fantastic home
page with BIG pictures of my fantastic pink roses? NO! A Doorway page! YES! So, I must do keyword
research!
Task 1: Find optimized
keywords. I did exactly that. I found out that 382 people recently
searched for "drying rose." The competition (websites talking about
drying roses)? ZERO! How many people searched for "preserving rose"?
There were 159 searches. Competition? Only 59 websites dealing
with this subject are currently indexed and listed by Google. My conclusion? "Drying
roses" is such a "niche" subject that I have no competition at all and
ironically enough I don't need a doorway page at all for this keyword! I will be the only
website dealing with this subject! But when I thought about it for a while, I
realized that "drying roses" could also have the meaning of "roses in the
process of dying while still on its natural state." So, I must rather focus on "preserving
roses." I have only 59 websites to beat! With a doorway page I will
possibly gain a rather high search engine ranking!
Note: You may think: "Only
159 potential visitors? Now, really, this is a waste of time!" Think again.
These visitors are 100% targeted "seekers". Will you be able to handle
them? Do you have enough flowers to supply 100 of them? Or even 50?
Statistics show that 1 out of 4 of these kind of visitors end up as buyers.
Task 2: Naming
your doorway page. This is easy and a short process. Use your keyword phrase for
the name. Once you know how to edit your page with a simple text editor such as Notepad,
you go right to the top of the page and type in (the bold part):
| <html><head>
<title>preserving
roses</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html> | Task 3:
Adding the meta tags. Like this (the bold part)
| <html><head>
<title>preserving
roses</title>
<meta
name="description" content="Detail information about preserving
roses">
<meta
name="keywords" content="preserving, roses, preserving roses">
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html> |
Task four:
Write the optimized content rich text. Your aim is to impress the search engine's robot as
well as your reader. You are writing for optimum density without falling into the trap of
spamdexing. I will add comments here and there using a
red color to distinguish it from the real
text.
____________________
Preserving roses
[The heading must be the
keyword phrase]
Preserving roses
[start your paragraph with the keyword phrase]
is a very satisfying undertaking. You experience the
feeling that by preserving roses you are actually
capturing the beauty of the queen of flowers and cutting
time decay right out of the equation. To achieve
ultimate results when preserving roses you need a very
specific preserving technique.
Using silica gel for preserving roses is the
best way to go. Although it is called a gel, it is
actually a granular. Use the "fine sand" - like quality
to retain the fragile structure of the roses' petals.
Although silica gel is very expensive it will be worth
every cent - especially so when you are preserving roses
and desiring to end up with a fantastic result!
[Thus far
we have used "preserving roses" 5 times and "preserving"
(standing alone) once and "roses" (standing alone) also
once. The first 50 to 80 words of the page are quite
important and you have to push the usage of your keyword
or keyword phrases to the limit. This is called
"keyword prominence", ie how early in the page the
keywords appear].
Your color choice is critical. For example: do not use
red roses for preserving purposes because you will end
up with a deep purple roses or even black colored roses.
Light pink roses are not only the most popular color
amongst florists, but retain it's color also perfectly
during the preserving phase. It would be a wise decision
using exclusively light pink when preserving roses.
["preserving
roses" - 1 more time and separately: "preserving" 2
times and "roses" 4 times. In the second paragraph it is
wise to ease off a bit and not push your keyword phrase
to hard because your reader will start thinking that
there is something "wrong"]
Cut the fresh rose
[singular usage here and
there is also a good technique]
just before it starts to open its petals. Keep it in a
refrigerator until it starts to open up.
[Using
"it" creates smooth reading - now that you have
established your density level for your keyword phrase.
Use the opportunity to write rich content].
Cut the stem about two fingers
down from the bottom of the flower itself and insert a
thin wire vertically as high up as possible without
entering the rose petal area. If you try to insert the
wire after the preserving process the dry stem will
break up. There must be about three fingers of open wire
visible after the insertion. Bend that part towards to
petals to form a kind of a hook.
[Keep your keywords going on a
continuous and discreet basis and focus on valuable
information].
You
have to use an air tight container for your preserving
activity. Instead of buying expensive equipment, use a
simple carton box and place a large plastic bag in it -
large enough to be sealed after filling up the box. Pour
a thick layer silica gel in the box. Bury the roses at a
45 - 60 degree angle in the desiccant in such a way the
weight of the silica will not disturb the petal
formation - that is the reason why roses with fully
opened petals must not be used. Make sure that you
carefully pour some of the preserving agent "inside" the
rose - between the different petals - as well. No open
spaces or "air locks" must be allowed. The roses must
not touch each other. If the box is deep enough, you can
bury a second layer on top of the first. Finally - to
end off the preserving preparations - cover the top
layer of roses totally with the gel and seal the box.
Store it in a fairly warm environment.
[Your effort is now
focused on content while dragging your keywords
along].
The
preserving will be completed in about 8 to 10 days.
Remove the roses carefully and gently shake out the
drying
agent. Can you distinguish between a fresh rose and the
dried one? You have only your nose to detect the fresh
one! Now for the waxing part. Waxing is needed to avoid
discoloring. Click here to read more
[add the link here to take the
visitor to an optimized page about "waxing"].
Preserving roses is a demanding
but very rewarding activity. If you are within reach of
a rose farm you can try preserving roses yourself.
Experimenting a little will quickly turn you in a rose
preserving master and florists will like you a lot. But
very important: PLEASE USE A MASK WHEN WORKING WITH THIS
PRESERVING AGENT - SILICA IN YOUR LUNGS IS NOT A GOOD
IDEA. THE IDEA IS PRESERVING ROSES - NOT HURTING YOUR
HEALTH. PLEASE USE A MASK!
Finally - if you ask me what is
my favorite flower to preserve, my answer will
unequivocally be... preserving roses!
[I have
tried to push my keyword phrase in the last section of
text to create a nice spread throughout and to lift the
density-factor a bit more].
Task Five:
Final touches. When your doorway page is written, save
it, add the links to other pages and
make sure there are links from other pages to your
doorway page as well (quite important). Now you are
ready to submit your page to the search engines.
General Comments
The word count of my doorway
page is just over 600 words. Because I wanted to insert
a few comments, I have created a fairly extensive text.
In general between 150 and 350 words will be just fine.
To sum the whole doorway page
up:
- a doorway page is
essentially not different from any other website
page
- we have just paid serious
attention to the optimized keyword part
- we have organized the text
to be keyword orientated
- we have avoided all kinds
of bells and whistles and have worked with "clean
text" to promote fast loading and easy "reading for
the crawler.
- Your page contains real,
valuable content - with no attempt to "fool"
search engines
A last perspective: A very
"smart approach" would be to set up your doorway pages
as short "dictionary pages" to act as explanatory notes
helping your visitors towards a thorough understanding
of your subject. They will think that you are very
generous to give them a lot of additional information.
At the same time the search engines will love you as
well for all your optimized pages!
Finally...
One article can not cover
everything that can be said. Our aim was to persuade you
to think new about your website approach. Think
keywords!
If you want to read more, try
http://www.1stsearchranking.net/keyword-rich-pages.htm
for instance. Browse the web and
try all sorts of keywords and learn from what those
websites did to gain high rankings.
Good luck!
Do you want more
quality information like this?
You will find more of
the same in the
Cozahost newsletter.
About the author
This article was
compiled by a Cozahost newsletter subscriber who whishes
to remain anonymous.
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