How Google's Doorway Pages Update Affects Local SEO

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Awesome Local Folks!

I thought I'd take a proactive stance and start a thread on the new doorway pages update from Google, as I feel there will be questions coming up about this here in the forum:

Here's the update announcement:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html

And here's the part that will make local business owners and Local SEOs take a second glance at this:

Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages:

Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic?

I think this will naturally lead to questions about the practice of creating local/city landing pages. At this point, my prediction is that this will come down to high quality vs. crummy quality pages of this type. In fact, after chatting briefly with Andrew Shotland, I'm leaning a bit toward seeing the above language as being strongly geared toward directory type sites and large franchises. I recommend reading Andrew's post about his take on this, as I think he's on the right track:

http://www.localseoguide.com/googles-about-to-close-your-local-doorway-pages/

So, I'm feeling at this point that if you've made the right efforts to develop unique, high quality local landing pages, you should be good unless you are an accidental casualty of an over-zealous update. We'll see! If anyone has thoughts to contribute on this thread, I hope they will, and if lots of questions start coming up about this here in the community, feel free to link back to this thread in helping your fellow community members Thanks, all!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Blake,

What I'm suggesting with those links is that you need to do a thorough analysis of any competitor to discover whether their high rankings are a case of geography, organic strength, reviews, citations and a host of other factors ... or, if the pack in question has been spammed. If the former, you then know what the factors are that are contributing to rank and can identify which factors (if any) you can target to surpass the competitor. If the latter, then you can always report spam to Google. There are believed to be several hundred factors that contribute to rank, and a Local SEO or local business owner who is feeling astonishment over being outranked by what appears to be a weak competitor needs to sit down and put the time in to discover whether these high rankings are the result of strength that Google is responding to, or the result of spam that Google is failing to catch.

In the scope of a forum, it's not likely that a community member is going to be able to take the time to do a full competitive analysis for you, so I'm hoping the links I've provided will get you started on doing one. I totally get how frustrating it can be to find your business or your client's business in this scenario of being outranked, but fortunately, we can use skill to divine the probable cause of this outcome and, hopefully, figure out how to overcome any issues, whenever possible.

Hope this helps!

[B.Dog]

Although confusing, I appreciate the shared links to the threads. It's still not clear to me why google ranks the site I shared #1! in a highly competitive keyword. It's the same keyword in endless local cities but with that city in the title next to it. Does google still see those titles are technically different? So google doesn't recognize www.url.com/keyword-city#1 and www.url.com/keyword-city#2 as penalty worthy? Seems unfair to those taking time to make sure there are no keyword titles used more than once on a large site. OH AND...the content on these endless "city" pages have the EXACT same content on each one but the city in 3 or 4 different areas is switched out.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Blake,

These 2 threads may help you diagnose competitors' rankings:

https://moz.com/community/q/do-you-know-what-s-triggering-your-local-packs

https://moz.com/community/q/top-local-organic-rankings-but-nowhere-to-be-found-on-google-snack-pack

Hope these help!

[B.Dog]

I'm super focused on creating non-duplicate content and creating blogs with killer info-graphics but I have a business I help where I created 10 specific city landing pages within the main site with great original content. Then I come across this site seasonsviewwindowanddoor.com and think, are you serious? How is this legal and it ranks high in any city search I do. Of course this conflicts my thinking about what to do. Any of your two cents is greatly appreciated

[MiriamEllis]

You're very welcome!

[joanna_mcd]

Thanks Miriam

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Joanna,

Yes - I would still recommend creating a unique page on your site for each location out of which you operate, and making maximum effort to ensure that the content on each page is unique and helpful.

[joanna_mcd]

Miriam,

Thanks for jumping on this - very helpful to see some info already being aggregated and questions answered. I know I'm a little late to the party, but it sounds to me like you'd still recommend that businesses (such as a bank, clothing retailer, etc.) that have one business but locations in multiple cities and/or states, create location specific landing pages that match up with individual google+ business pages?

Obviously, each page has elements like a unique description and service set list as appropriate, unique hours/timezone, potentially customer reviews, unique driving directions from major areas, etc. Essentially - true content users would be looking at.

My understanding is this is still the "best practice" path for ranking in local pack and/or queries that drive location-specfic serps. Accurate?

Thanks again!

[rodwag67]

Thanks Miriam!

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Rod,

This is Google's def. of Doorway Pages: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721311

If you read through that carefully, I think the conclusion you may draw is that the difference between what Google is describing as a doorway page and what you may hear Local SEOs referring to as 'local landing pages' or 'city landing pages' or what have you, would be uniqueness and quality. This is my reading of this, anyway.

If you are going to create landing pages, as in the case of a local business serving multiple cities, I would suggest making maximum effort to ensure that each page is a thorough, unique, stand-alone resource for visitors. Don't throw up a bunch of thin, similar pages. Go for uniqueness and high quality. Hope this helps.

[rodwag67]

I'd like to hear the differences between doorway pages and landing pages.  I see Google utilizing multiple local landing pages, so if we follow creating pages similar to this we should be fine?

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Rod,

I'm trying to understand what this service does. I looked up a random business in it and it simply seems to be giving a sense of how the business is listed on Google. I'm not seeing actual landing pages. Is there something particular that you are looking at on this site that concerns you in regards to doorway pages?

[rodwag67]

Google updated - now it goes to city/town: https://www.gybo.com/pa/norristown (after you put in your town)

So I'm thinking this is in line with what we currently do for town landing pages.

[MiriamEllis]

Hmm... that link is redirecting me to a homepage.

[rodwag67]

What are your thoughts if local landing pages are created similar to the gybo.com pages?

http://www.gybo.com/pennsylvania/ is one example (my state) - thanks for the link Miriam!

[LindaBuquet]

Thanks for sharing Miriam!

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Rod,

While there hasn't really been any more news that I'm aware of on this, you might like to check out the thread on Linda Buquet's forum, which has some additional discussion and some other links in it, for further reading:

http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/29401-google-warns-about-doorway-page-algo-update-could-affect-local.html

[rodwag67]

Any updates on this topic?  Thanks!

[MiriamEllis]

That's great, Linda! I bet you'll be getting stories from your community about things they see happening with this. Really glad you'll be covering it.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Adam,

Good comment! I'm also thinking about the multi-site scenario - particularly the multi-mini-site scenario. I've never been a fan of this approach and it does seem like the update could be applied to this scenario. Not sure yet ... but could be.

[MiriamEllis]

Agree with you, Ryan, that creativity is so key. One thing I have long stressed to my own clients is that owning a website = having become a publisher. You want to publish great stuff - not junk.

[LindaBuquet]

Thanks Miriam, we've been discussing in the G+ Pro community all day and I'm working on a forum post for tomorrow. I have Andrew's post in there and I'll include a link to your post here as well.

[adammason]

Hi Miriam

The other aspect of this that got me thinking when I saw the update was around multiple sites for the same business. I have seen this in several niches where the same business has 2 or 3 different websites ranking on page 1 for their main term. Each of these sites has unique content etc however they are all linked via the same address. I have been waiting for Google to resolve this issue as it is technically a doorway page unique just more sophisticated. It wouldn't be hard for them to devalue a site if they see it ranking well and it is the same business as another site ranking.

I wonder if they will deal with this issue in this update.

[RyanPurkey]

Great update Miriam. There are a lot of things site owners can add to these types of pages to help with unique content: drive time to the nearest branch from City / Neightborhood X; mobile service schedules in City / Neighborhood X; Images of service radius; highly localized testimonials, etc. Will be interesting to see the impact with franchisees..