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YIKES! IT WORKED! Doorway Pages for Search Engine Placement
by Mike Valentine
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O.K. Boys and girls, it's time to put on your skeptics
hat and join me in a little cynicism here. There's no way
that a simple technique like "Doorway Pages" can work to
improve your search engine ranking on specific search words
or phrases. If it were so easy, everyone would do it and
then nobody would benefit. I've heard those stories about
sites vaulting to number one position on the search engines
and they're bogus! Pure unadulterated bovine manure!
Yowee! That was what I was saying just last week because
my rankings were in the basement. My weekly reports from
"PositionAgent" consistently had all my keywords showing up
as a big ugly zero on all the search engines they monitor.
I was beginning to believe I'd never rank in the top 10 on
any search. That's what I was expecting when my "SearchEngine-
Monitor" report showed up this week. Then I nearly swallowed
my heart, because I suddenly found it in my throat!
There it was, listed number three (3!) on AltaVista under
the search phrase "e-commerce tutorial" and just to verify
that position, I've been back tonight to see where I rank
and I've dropped to number five! But guess what? Now I have
TWO sites in the top 10 at AltaVista, both of them doorway
pages I created to help improve my ranking there. I thought,
O.K., no harm in trying it to see if it works. But never in
over a million years did I expect to get TWO PAGES IN THE
TOP TEN RANKING for ANY search phrase.
I bet you're thinking, "Sure you did Mike" I invite you
to take a look yourself! Go to http://www.altavista.com
and type "e-commerce tutorial" in the search box and click
the search button. It may change position tomorrow, but
I'm there today and even took a screen shot to prove it!
Do you think I'm at all excited? You bet your life I am!
Now, top ten ranking for one obscure search phrase is not
the magic bullet for success. But do you think I'm going to
be cynical about doorway pages any more? Not likely. Instead
I've begun to pay close attention to what works for whom.
Why? you ask? Because this same doorway page gets me that
same big ugly zero ranking in the other search engines and
I made number 34 on "WebCrawler" with my home page, proof
that honest content and good page design with proper key-
word metatags will accomplish things without "trickery".
This particular doorway page works only for AltaVista and
only today. They'll no doubt change their algorithms and
lose me altogether tomorrow. I'll be looking for ways to
improve results at Excite and AOLnetfind now. I do this for
my clients and work toward success for each of them. If you
want to try it yourself, hop over to http://submitplus.bc.ca
where you'll find the AltaVista effective doorway page
template that I used to create my high-ranking pages!
I don't want to resort to different doorway pages for all
my three hundred pages for each different search engine. But
I will use every resource I can find to succeed honestly
in this business. If it works, don't break it!
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Weekly Ezine emphasizing small business on the Internet
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DrNunley's Biz-Tips
by Kevin Nunley
Get More Hits With Doorway Pages
Getting listed high on search engines can bring you a flood
of new customers. One way to get listed on search engines
is to create doorway pages.
Search engines love sites that tightly focus on a specific
word or phrase that a user is searching for. If I type
"printers" into Google, the search engine computer will
look for pages that have printers mentioned in the title, meta
tags, headlines, copy, and even in the hyperlinks.
Rather than using this kind of one-word overkill on your
main website, use doorway pages. Each page can focus on
a particular word or phrase lots of people use to find a site
like yours.
The doorway page looks like your regular page, only the
words are skewed to frequently mention your keyword.
But what words do customers use most to find a site like
yours? Use the free search term suggestion tool at
Overture.com.
Look in the Advertiser Login section. You can get a list of
similar words and phrases people use.
Get Kevin's service that optimizes the copy on your pages
for search engines. His staff of expert writers create
keyword rich copy that gets results.
