Doorway pages

What are doorway pages?

Doorway pages are pages created specifically to rank for a search term or a set of similar search terms, without offering real value themselves. Visitors are sent on from those pages to one other page. Google treats this as spam and lists doorway pages in its spam policies.

Why are doorway pages important?

• Risk of lower rankings: Google may demote such pages and sometimes the whole site.
• Possible manual action: for abuse, Google can step in and report it in Search Console.
• A thin line with local pages: pages with real, unique content are perfectly fine.

Examples of doorway pages

• Fifty pages such as “plumber Leeds” and “plumber York” with identical text apart from the place name.
• Several domains, each built around its own keyword, that all redirect to one main site.
• Not a doorway page: a local page with real projects, service area and reviews from that region.

How do you avoid doorway pages?

Give each page its own purpose and its own content, such as projects, prices and the questions that audience asks. Create fewer, better pages rather than many near-identical variations. Read more in our local SEO service.