We have a competitor who has several doorway websites (single page sites) on different keywordy domains. The menu links on each doorway page / site / domain, go to their main site, that is why I am calling them doorway pages (?). As well as running Adwords on their main domain, they are now also running Adwords campaigns on their doorway domains. So the doorway sites are in effect landing pages, but on different domains fronting their 1 main site. Is this ok with Google, or illegal? If its ok we may do the same. It seems a good way to hog the top slots in Adwords and force the competition down. Thanks for any guidance here. bialystock.
I would like to clarify if it makes any difference - the website concerned are nothing to do with affiliate marketing or link farm pages. we are talking about selling our company product/s. thanks, bialystock.
Yep, single page sites with keyword domains are certainly 'doorway pages' and absolutely not OK with Google - this is what their webmaster guidelines say: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66355 "Whether deployed across many domains or established within one domain, doorway pages tend to frustrate users, and are in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines." Deploying Adwords for the Doorway pages may get a boost with relevancy\quality scores but I would say a greater chance of being caught by G and would certainly not recommend it. If your competitor is hogging the top spot with these doorway pages - Adwords or otherwise, rather than trying to follow suit you could report them https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en&pli=1 Hope that helps T
Thanks tomelliott. I have a slight correction to what I said above: In Adwords, they are only showing 1 ad at a time, so not hogging the sponsored slots. But that doesn't really make a difference in your reply as I see it, because the single page doorway sites/domains are all there in the organic results, so they are trying to hog those. Thanks again for your feedback. b.