Get
Rid of Those Doorway Pages
Get Rid of Those Doorway Pages
Getting traffic to your site is the ultimate goal. Withoutthe traffic,
you site isn't going to do much but take upcyberspace. Now, there
are many ways to do this, and youshould be doing them all. But for
our purpose here, I willlimit it to Search Engines.
A while back, doorway pages were all the rage. Everyone wasscrambling
to create hundreds and thousands of pages to essentially trick the
search engines into leading people totheir sites. It seemed unethical
to me, and I figured thatthe engines would pick up on this and bring
it to an abrupthalt. And they have. They want pages with content.
So muchfor all those doorway pages. It was a big waste of time and
effort.
Most web sites consist of several pages. Hopefully, each page covers
a specific, but related topic. And, hopefully, there is already
a navigational system in place, where each page links to all other
pages. This is a must.
If you have a site, for example, on Internet Marketing, you already
know that this subject encompasses many topics. Each of those topics
deserves its own page. You might have pages on Ebook Marketing,
Promotion, Ezines, Search Engines, etc.
Each page in your site is already a 'doorway.' If you optimize
each of these pages as if it were a doorway page,you will get a
good ranking in the Search Engines. First, make sure that each page
sticks to a particular topic. Then write your meta tags accordingly.
Here are some guidelines for top placement in the Search
Engines:
* Try to limit your meta keywords (preferably phrases) to 3. The
worst thing you can do is have a gazillion keywords. Your relevancy
will be shot to heck and you might get listed, but you will be #3,583,204.
No one will find you.
* Do not use the same keywords on every page. Each page is different,
so make the keywords different.
* Make sure your keywords appear in the title tag, thedescription
tag, and all over your page, especially near the top.
* Do not list keywords that do not appear on the page. Again,
Do NOT list keywords that do not appear on the page. Lists have
been circulated showing the "most searched for keywords".
They generally consist of words like: sex, naked, women, gay, adult,
erotica etc.... Don't even go there. Do you really want people going
to your site that don't give a hoot about what you have to say???
They are not interested and will not buy anything. You are wasting
your time as well as theirs.
* Use keywords in comment tags, alt tags, and in header tags.
You can also use a clear 1x1 pixel image and load the alt tag with
keywords.
* The very first thing that appears on your page should be a statement
of benefits rich in keywords, similar to your description meta tag.
Some Search Engines ignore your meta tags and print the first words
on your page as the description in their listing. If your navigational
bar is at the top of the page, that is what will show up in their
description. Not good.
* Header tags, (H1 for example) are very important. SearchEngines
read the header tags. Use these for paragraphheadings instead of
font tags, and load up the Keywords.
* Forget the bouncing flash and glitz. Yeah, they are fun to play
with, but the Search Engines are not impressed. They may even be
hampered by this as far as indexing your page. Frames, flash movies,
CGI scripts, javascript, applets and image maps are all complete
junk to a search engine spider. Not only that, this sort of thing
will actually push your real content further from the top of the
page, reducing the relevancy of what the spiders actually do see.
* Keep the spiders happy. Feed them lots of relevant content.
This bears repeating, but I won't. :)
* Get a Domain! A top 10 listing is virtually impossible to achieve
without having your own registered domain name.
There is no secret magical formula for getting a top rankingin
the Search Engines. Currently there are over 5,000 places to register
a web site with the number increasing daily. In reality, about 10
of these search engines will produce 90% of your search engine traffic.
The larger search engines like Excite, Lycos and Alta Vista are
visited millions of time a week and offer the most comprehensive
types of searches for Internet surfers.
About the Author Windsong is webmaster,
editor and publisher at: http://marketing-resources.com/. Subscribe
to windsong's free e-zine: All About Search Engines!(tm) Send a
blank email to: aboutsearchengines-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
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