Bad Doorway Pages

No one likes to wait for a page to download (often with a large graphic), just to be told, "Click Here to Enter Our Site!!!". They just DID that when they chose your link out of the thousands of search engine results. Do not insult their intelligence or show so little respect for their time, by putting in a useless page as your most important introduction to your site.

Your visitors won't appreciate you if you waste their time. They will not think your site is a good demonstration of efficiency, intelligence, or usefulness if you start off first thing by showing them a page for which there is no purpose.

Bad doorway pages come in two basic flavors:

Time Wasters - These are what I describe above. A Time Waster is a page that has no real function other than to require the visitor to make an extra click, and to wait for yet another page to download. If you have a doorway page to your site that does not offer multiple link options, then you'd better have a darn good reason to put it there, and that reason had better be one that benefits your site visitors.

A page with a choice between languages, a choice with or without Flash, or other options that offer a potential benefit to your visitors is one thing. A page which has nothing but your logo and the words "enter here" is a colossal waste of time, and will give a bad impression which the rest of your site will struggle to overcome.

Black Hat SEO - This is where a site owner creates multiple pages, in several domains, which all lead to the same site. This type of doorway page is frowned upon by search engines, and is theorized as a tactic that will get your site banned (no one is certain about what does or does not get you banned, but this one is universally accepted as a BAD Tactic). There is really no reason for these anyway, because in the time it takes you to set up a domain and upload a copycat page, you could go out and get yourself a couple of legitimate, good quality backlinks which would do you MUCH more good! And for the cost of all those domain names, you could get some good permanent links from either Paid Inclusion directories, or from flat fee text link placements.

Your home page is your introduction to your site. It should offer the most commonly requested options to your visitors. It should show the scope of your site (with visible product, service, or informational links), and it should offer easy access to contact info and support info. It should beckon the visitor deeper into the site, and invite them to see more.

It won't invite anyone in if it gives no indication that you have any clue why someone would come to your site in the first place. It needs to show, right off, that it does or does not have the information that the visitor came looking for.

Written by Laura Wheeler