Doorway pages

[Kev C]

I have recently purchased 3 domains and plan to fill them with relevant content to my main site.

If I then link 5 or 6 different products by way of a 'buy it now' button which takes this through to said main site, will this get me blacklisted by google?

There is no mention on the site of my main company url and it is hosted with a different provider.

Can anybody help with this one?

Cheers

Kev

 

[Lee_Owen]

The only thing you may encounter is the sandbox whereby you lose weighting with google for a while, get links into the site from elsewhere, link to others on an informative basis, try and steer away from a doorway page and instead make a mini site of several pages with content which can be just as easy, that way you'll rate better for more search terms and can be more successful at achieving your end aim which is driving traffic to your main site.

 

[Kev C]

Many thanks for the reply.

Kev

 

[los_design]

I have recently purchased 3 domains and plan to fill them with relevant content to my main site.

If I then link 5 or 6 different products by way of a 'buy it now' button which takes this through to said main site, will this get me blacklisted by google?

There is no mention on the site of my main company url and it is hosted with a different provider.

Can anybody help with this one?

Cheers

Kev

Call me picky but is that not blackhat SEO?

Surely you would be better of improving your main site rather than diluting your efforts with worthless links from new domains.

Oh, and although they are on a different server have they been registered in your name?

JMTC

 

[Kev C]

They are registered in my name.

The reason we did this was that our competitors, who all without exception, have excellent ranking and continue to maintain position.

The type of site we have modelled it on is a five page site with relevant content.

Having read a lot of stuff tonight we are going to err on the side of caution and remove the link element.

We may turn the page into a place holder page with a reference that our main company owns this.

Do you feel this would be within the rules?

 

[IainW]

They are registered in my name.

The reason we did this was that our competitors, who all without exception, have excellent ranking and continue to maintain position.

The type of site we have modelled it on is a five page site with relevant content.

Having read a lot of stuff tonight we are going to err on the side of caution and remove the link element.

We may turn the page into a place holder page with a reference that our main company owns this.

Do you feel this would be within the rules?

Just redirect names to your main site and leave it at that.

 

[Lee_Owen]

Just redirect names to your main site and leave it at that.

It depends why the domains were bought in the first place though surely? You can't just buy names and redirect them, well of course you can, depends if they had traffic initially or if they will be of any benefit. There's nothing wrong with creating minisites with full associated content and the odd link to the main site, seperate servers is a good move though as I understand.

Just don't duplicate the content or you'll get hit by a filter, original is required and link to other sites and get other links in, buying associated domains is a very good business move and an intelligent one, however just redirecting has no real purpose unless highly generic and with traffic although can and will be indexed, even if picked up traffic domains, that can and will expire eventually without unique content on.

It all depends what price you paid and what your motives are behind the purchase, if redirecting suits the purpose then no need to make the effort but creating entirely seperate websites that look and feel seperate, especially to a spider, can be good traffic drivers for keywords when ranking. Depends on your business model and reasoning behind the move, redirecting could do the job just as well but doorway pages were kicked out years ago.

 

[TheSlackers]

Just redirect names to your main site and leave it at that.

Why would you do that with new domains? :|

Personally, I think that if you are creating more specialist "mini sites" with fresh relivent content then there isn't any problems with this. That said to give the mini sites any weight you'll have to market them also. So now rather than marketing 1 site you're marketing 4.

 

[An Oasis]

If I then link 5 or 6 different products by way of a 'buy it now' button which takes this through to said main site, will this get me blacklisted by google?

Done properly no. Lots of companies have "satellite" sites doing what you are talking about. The question is is it worth the effort?

 

Done properly no. Lots of companies have "satellite" sites doing what you are talking about. The question is is it worth the effort?

Quite in general it is far better to build one powerful site.

Unless you are in a low competition area ,where several geo or goods specific sites would have a chance of ranking.

Doorway pages work best on established power sites not new sites.

Earl

 

[Neyl]

Why would you do that with new domains? :|

Sometimes it's a good idea to purchase domains which users might type in such as other spellings, or..... if you've a product brand and a company brand, but want for example, your company brand to behave in the same way as it does in offline marketing, remain quietly in the background... or... you might purchase the .com version and redirect it to the .co.uk name. Several reasons off the top of my head why. Hope that helps.

Regards

 

[IainW]

Why would you do that with new domains? :|

Personally, I think that if you are creating more specialist "mini sites" with fresh relivent content then there isn't any problems with this. That said to give the mini sites any weight you'll have to market them also. So now rather than marketing 1 site you're marketing 4.

Just ignore comments, I was distracted in the middle of writing it and couldn't get back to finish.

Iain

 

[ORDERED WEB]

Personally as a user I hate doorway pages. But you can intellegently use the domains. Might be worth reading this

pinpoint marketing with microsites

You can do a re-direct too. it depends on how much effort you want to make

 

[los_design]

Done properly no. Lots of companies have "satellite" sites doing what you are talking about. The question is is it worth the effort?

Excellent point. I never thought of that. A site that could target 1 particular product or service that can then gain more genre specific SERPS.

But to stretch the question further...would this not give the same results if you were to optimise the original sites relevant page/section?

Regards
Daren

 

[ORDERED WEB]

Excellent point. I never thought of that. A site that could target 1 particular product or service that can then gain more genre specific SERPS.

But to stretch the question further...would this not give the same results if you were to optimise the original sites relevant page/section?

Regards
Daren

there are 2 points here

1. the satilite domain can stand up on its own and get a ranking, which is borrowed by the main site
2. you ought to optimise all the original pages anyway

Think about this.. You sell car insurance - a "small car policy"

if you wrote a satilite page up in "young, super for youngsters, great for small cars, free ipod.. " then it clearly markets your policy to the young market

If you wraped a page in "senior, super for oldies, great for small cars, Free parker pen and we come and polish you zimmer frame" then that satilite page is great for the mature market.

If they then both point into the small car policy page.. the small car policy page has 3 chances

1. from the youngsters
2. from the oldies
3. form the smal car policy page itself

If the youngsers and oldies pages are on the site or off the site is partially irrelevant - you still have 3 pages of substantially different content, selling yoru product

There is a possible benefit if they are in another domain, due to how search enginges calculate things

 

there are 2 points here

1. the satilite domain can stand up on its own and get a ranking, which is borrowed by the main site
2. you ought to optimise all the original pages anyway

Think about this.. You sell car insurance - a "small car policy"

if you wrote a satilite page up in "young, super for youngsters, great for small cars, free ipod.. " then it clearly markets your policy to the young market

If you wraped a page in "senior, super for oldies, great for small cars, Free parker pen and we come and polish you zimmer frame" then that satilite page is great for the mature market.

If they then both point into the small car policy page.. the small car policy page has 3 chances

1. from the youngsters
2. from the oldies
3. form the smal car policy page itself

If the youngsers and oldies pages are on the site or off the site is partially irrelevant - you still have 3 pages of substantially different content, selling yoru product

There is a possible benefit if they are in another domain, due to how search enginges calculate things

What you say is true but as Richard said is it worth while.?

Long tail produces very little traffic in most cases.

as an example :

Young driver insurance produces 40 .

car insurance produces 17,000.

So as said before your efforts are in general going to be better spent building a single site up in order to attack major keywords.

Earl

 

[los_design]

Some great food for thought Richard/Earl

And the timing is perfect too...as it touches onto a niche site we have bee asked about developing asides a main site.

Once again, many thanks.

 

[paretowasright]

To reinforce some of the good advice here I have a new client who has a shopping site for mobile phones but has also built a hub site with loads of deep links into the product pages of the main site. Although the hub site is helpful and the deep links are narrowed down by phone types it appears Google have taken it badly and sand boxing may have happened. Both sites are about 4-5 months old but I have told them to drastically reduce the links from the hubsite as its on the same server and same registrant. Drastic advice but its the only way to see if it is causing indexing problems especially with 2 newish sites

Any views appreciated.

 

[Neyl]

This is an interesting area and I'll say upfront I'm more your 'sceptical curious observer" than an expert. I believe in the "one site done well" philosophy. Anyway, my two-penny worth... The thing about a Hub site in order to be 'genuine' is that it needs to have incoming links too. You don't mention whether it does or doesn't. The Sandboxing Theory (it's a theory) is more about the links than the nature of the site itself. If you've over-whelmingly one-way links to the one site, well, I can see this might be assessed as simply some sort of 'doorway' or 'link farm' rather than a genuine Hub.

There are so many factors in getting results in a search engine that you always have to beware of drawing conclusions. It could be that the Hub has not been identified as a hub at all but as just another website (incidentally spoiling the 'unique content' effect of the main site) and is too static - sites drop very quickly if their content is unchanging, I believe especially newer sites, or their content is repeated/very similar to elsewhere. Or.... it could be that other sites getting listed could just be doing better.... Or... and so on.

I'll be interested in the comments of others on this topic as there are better experts in here than me. Regards.

 

[TheSlackers]

Sometimes it's a good idea to purchase domains which users might type in such as other spellings, or..... if you've a product brand and a company brand, but want for example, your company brand to behave in the same way as it does in offline marketing, remain quietly in the background... or... you might purchase the .com version and redirect it to the .co.uk name. Several reasons off the top of my head why. Hope that helps.

Regards

hhhhmmmmmm....I don't think so.

 

Some great food for thought Richard/Earl

And the timing is perfect too...as it touches onto a niche site we have bee asked about developing asides a main site.

Once again, many thanks.

Having said what I have I in fact run half a dozen sites to support a main site.

But when I built the satalite sites I was aware that I would have to let them sit for a year before they would produce meaningful traffic.

so as a long term strategy its a good idea as one is not left with all ones eggs in a single basket.

But the main site was many years old and had a bit of clout.

for a new site I would stick with building that into a powerful site first.

Earl

 

[ORDERED WEB]

The thing about a Hub site in order to be 'genuine' is that it needs to have incoming links too. You don't mention whether it does or doesn't

They absoloutley do!

 

[Neyl]

Yes, hands up here too. I've stated I'm a "one-site-done-well" promoter. And that's correct. However, I'm currently experimenting - exploring - the pros and cons of supporting, enhancing, strengthening an online presence with other "content locations" as I'm thinking of them. My main site is well developed, been around a while and achieves the top slot consistently with good traffic (Page Rank = 0 incidentally last time I could be bothered looking). I've various reasons why I'm locating complimentary content in separate silos. It's all an experiment, but I'm careful to manage the content (quality, topic) and the ethos of each content location. Very quickly, I found that for the key search term, well, if the "pages from the UK" is chosen I'm all ten results on the first page and several on the second page of results. I'm not spending much time editing/adding to the content I should say. I'm finding it an interesting study., whether it's especially clever... that's another thing.