Hello, I have a question about doorway pages and backlinks. If backlinks point to the front page, or main url, would this improve the ranking of doorway pages? If not, does that mean that each doorway page must have backlinks pointing to it to rank well? Thanks, Luke
read http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 . if you start to create doorway pages, it can hurt your rankings. Google does not suggest people to create doorway pages
Webmasters are sometimes told to submit "bridge" pages or "doorway" pages to search engines to improve their traffic. Doorway pages are created to do well for particular phrases. They are also known as portal pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry pages and by other names. Doorway pages are easy to identify in that they have been designed primarily for search engines, not for human beings.
I think the guys find the term you are using as something not advisable to do that is why they said you shouldn't use a doorway page. But maybe you just had the term for the sake of raising the question. Here's my attempt assuming that "doorway pages" are pages found inside your site not intended to deceive human visitors. If you are promoting a page found inside your site (doorway page) and if backlinks point to the homepage and not to that inside page, it won't help boost the ranking of your doorway pages. Otherwise, if your doorway page satisfies the definitions stated, better take it down. Not only it will not help on rankings, it could be a reason for your site to be penalized.