How to do a non-spammy "doorway page"?
-
Hi there,
ISSUE:
I have a client who wishes to use a "doorway" page, but not in a spammy way. He would like to have a nice crisp URL for use in ads/brochures. The page is strictly a landing page (just with a separate URL).
DOORWAY/LANDING PAGE WILL BE:
Non-spammy -- There will be no attempt to optimize the landing page/no attempt to get the page to rank.
Strictly a vanity URL -- he likes the way a separate website looks in ads as opposed to a landing page on the existing website (i.e., www.websitename.com/landing page)
WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO:
I'm basically trying to figure out what the best things to do to protect his other sites (which are very high quality valuable sites which rank well) from getting punished.
STEPS I'M CONSIDERING:
Robots no follow
Separate hosting server
Different person's name on a private domain registration
Adding additional pages, so it's not a 1-page "doorway"
Many thanks in advance to anyone who would share their experience and help me protect my client in the best way possible. I've told him there are risks, but he still wants to go ahead.
MC
-
Thanks so much! That answers my question.
-
Sorry, I think I confused myself after I read the replies
Meta Robots (NOINDEX) is probably your best bet, then. Canonical would be a decent bet if you expected the landings pages to have inbound links or other ranking signals (like a 301, they can help consolidate those signals). If it's a landing page purely for purposes outside of organic search, though, simply blocking it is fine.
-
Hi,
Thanks so much for your responses.
To clarify, as I said in my original question:
"There will be no attempt to optimize the landing page/no attempt to get the page to rank."Adding NO FOLLOW makes perfect sense.
One follow up question...
I'm not sure if I would need the REL=Canonical if there's no duplication issue? Would NO FOLLOW be enough to handle any issues?
Thanks again,
MC -
Just to clarify on a point William raised - do you want the "doorway" page to rank? That's where the trouble usually starts. Vanity URLs and landing pages are fine - if you canonical them, NOINDEX (or even 301-redirect, if you don't care if the URL changes), then Google isn't going to see any attempt at manipulative content.
The other issue is generally relevance. The problem in the past was when people used a doorway page to bring visitors in on one term or set of terms and then that was just a link to a wildly different site. If the landing page is relevant and non-duplicate, it's not nearly as big of a deal.
Personally, I would not do private registration, separate hosting, etc., because that honestly looks like you are trying to hide this page and get away with something. Just don't index the page, and you should be fine. I've used landing pages for paid search on all kinds of URLs, and as long as organic didn't see them, it's no problem at all.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Referring subdirectory pages from 3rd hierarchy level pages. Will this hurts?
Hi all, We have product feature pages at 3rd tier like website.com/product/features. We have the help guides for each of these features on a different subdirectory like website.com/help/guides. We are linking these help guides from every page of features. So, will it hurts us anywhere just because we are encouraging 4th tier pages in website, moreover they are from different sub-directory. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Problems preventing Wordpress attachment pages from being indexed and from being seen as duplicate content.
Hi According to a Moz Crawl, it looks like the Wordpress attachment pages from all image uploads are being indexed and seen as duplicate content..or..is it the Yoast sitemap causing it? I see 2 options in SEO Yoast: Redirect attachment URLs to parent post URL. Media...Meta Robots: noindex, follow I set it to (1) initially which didn't resolve the problem. Then I set it to option (2) so that all images won't be indexed but search engines would still associate those images with their relevant posts and pages. However, I understand what both of these options (1) and (2) mean, but because I chose option 2, will that mean all of the images on the website won't stand a chance of being indexed in search engines and Google Images etc? As far as duplicate content goes, search engines can get confused and there are 2 ways for search engines
Web Design | | SEOguy1
to reach the correct page content destination. But when eg Google makes the wrong choice a portion of traffic drops off (is lost hence errors) which then leaves the searcher frustrated, and this affects the seo and ranking of the site which worsens with time. My goal here is - I would like all of the web images to be indexed by Google, and for all of the image attachment pages to not be indexed at all (Moz shows the image attachment pages as duplicates and the referring site causing this is the sitemap url which Yoast creates) ; that sitemap url has been submitted to the search engines already and I will resubmit once I can resolve the attachment pages issues.. Please can you advise. Thanks.0 -
Why would a developer build all page content in php?
Picked up a new client. Site is built on Wordpress. Previous developer built nearly all page content in their custom theme's PHP files. In other words, the theme's "page.php" file contains virtually all the HTML for each of the site's pages. Each individual page's back-end page editor appears blank, except for some of the page text. No markup, no widgets, no custom fields. And no dedicated, page-specific php files either. Pages are differentiated within page.php using: elseif (is_page("27") Has anyone ever come across this approach before? Why might someone do this?
Web Design | | mphdavidson0 -
2 Menu links to same page. Is this a problem?
One of my clients wants to link to the same page from several places in the navigation menu. Does this create any crawl issues or indexing problems? It's the same page (same url) so there is no duplicate content problems. Since the page is promotional, the client wants the page accessible from different places in the nav bar. Thanks, Dino
Web Design | | Dino640 -
Should Blog Category Archive URLs be Set to "No-Index" in Wordpress?
It appears that Google Webmaster Tools is listing about 120 blog archives URLs in Google Index>Index Status that should not be listed. Our site map contains 650 pages, but Google shows 860. Pages like: <colgroup><col width="464"></colgroup>
Web Design | | Kingalan1
| http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/category/manhattan-office-space | With Titles Like: <colgroup><col width="454"></colgroup>
| Manhattan Office Space Archives - Metro Manhattan Office Space | Are listed when in the Rogerbot crawl report for the site. How can we remove such pages from Google Webmaster Tools, Index Status? Our site map shows about 650 pages, yet Google show these extra pages. We would prefer that they not be indexed. Note that these pages do not appear when we run a site:www.nyc-officespace-leader.com search. The site has suffered a drop in ranking since May and we feel it prudent to keep Google from indexing useless URLs. Before May 650 pages showed on the Webmaster Tools Index status, and suddenly in early June when we upgraded the site the index grew by about 175 pages. I suspect the 120 blog archives URLs may have something to do with it. How can we get them removed? Can we set them to "No-Index", or should the robot text be used to remove them? Or can some type of removal request be made to Google? My developers have been struggling with this issue since early June. The bloat on the site is about 175 URLs not on the site map. Is there any go to authority on this issue (it is apparently rather complicated) that can provide a definitive answer? Thanks!!
Alan0 -
Page missing meta description some times a good thing?
Just courious to why http://moz.com/learn/seo does not appear to have the meta tag: name="description" content=""> Is this purposely done this way for some reason? Or has it become less important? Just curious.
Web Design | | DanielMulderNL0 -
HELP! IE secure page display issue on new live site
For some reason IE 7, 8, & 9 do not display the following page: https://www.jwsuretybonds.com/protools.htm All they show is the Norton seal. It shows properly in all other browsers without issue (including IE 10+), but the earlier versions flash the page for a split second, then hides everything. Can someone shed some light on this? This is a new live site we just launched minutes ago and these browsers account for 12% of our overall traffic. UGH I hate you microsoft!!! Thanks all 🙂
Web Design | | TheDude0 -
Indexing Dynamic Pages
Hi, I am having an issues among others, regarding indexing dynamic pages. Our website, www.me-by-melia, was just put live and I am concerned the bottom naviagtion pages (http://www.me-by-melia.com/#store, http://www.me-by-melia.com/#facebook, etc) will not be indexed and create duplicate pages. Also, when you open these pages in a new tab, it takes you to homepage. The website was created in HTML5. Please advise.
Web Design | | Melia0