Cloaking - DoorwayDomains - LinkPopularity

[Lello]

First of all: I do not cloak to spam, but to position relevant keywords on simple spider-friendly pages instead of ruining the design of the normal pages. Most of the pages are even dynamically generated and the SEs wouldn't index these pages (we use a script-language similar to php which is not accepted by some SEs).

I am using domains that carry doorwaypages for my customers.the customer gets a subdomain on my domain which is routed on a subfolder. e.g.: www.customersubdomain.mydomain.de. The visitor's pages are placed under the customer's domain e.g.: www.customerdomain.de/visitorpage1-n.htm so the cloaking-skript redirects to pages under another domain.

this leads to three problems:
1st the link popularity: I can't submit my doorway-domain to important directories like ODP
Can I? So I won't profit from LP for the doorways.

2nd as Air's description of save cloaking recommends not to make cloaking visible to e.g. curious competitors in my case the cloaking is visible as soon as the visitor - coming from the SE's search result list - clicks any link on the customer's website because the domain suddenly changes from customersubdomain.mydomain.de to customersdomain.de

BUT:
I don't want to give risk to the customers domains and IPs to get banned by SE.

So what do you think about this problem?

Shall I install cloaked dwps directly on customer's servers profit the LP and run the risk of getting banned or is my system saver?

At least I have to keep in mind that customers won't always like me to install cgis on their server or it won't just be possible for technical reasons (such as NT-Server, etc.)

Anyone who has been faced with this kind of problem ?

Anyone who thinks cloaking isn't useful for these reasons.

Thanks in advance.

Lello

[WebGuerrilla]

You will always get better results cloaking from your client's domain rather than using a throw-away domain. Not only will you be able to benefit from the LP, you will also get many more spider visits. It is virtually impossible to get Google to come and spider a throw awy domain. If, however you get a Yahoo listing or a link from another popular site in the Google database, you will see GoogleBot quickly and regularly.

Regarding the threat of getting banned, you need to really evalute your client's current situation. If they are already getting decent search engine traffic and your plan is to cloak to try and push them up a bit higher, it probably isn't a good idea.

If, on the otherhand, your client's site has good content but is "spider challenged" then the threat of being banned is non-existant. I have never heard a client express concern about potentially being banned from a database they have never been able to get into. :)

As always, it is a judgement call. But using a secondary domain whos only purpose is to serve optimized pages to spider engines means that you will only be able to achieve success going after relatively non-competitive, seldom searched on terms.

[littleman]

Ok, my take. I use doorway domains extensively and have had decent success with them. One of the things I do is create my own link popularity. I cross link my domains, and sub pages. I also create satellite sites that are semi-independent of the internal linking structure. You do have to be careful doing this, though. You do not want to create an obvious trail which will unravel your whole strategy. At this point, I'd stay away from any publicized linking campaigns.

I gotta disagree with you WG. There is still good traffic out there for doorway domains. It is not as easy as it once was, but it is still out there if you cast a big enough net. Believe it or not my doorway domain strategy is actually doing better now than it was a year ago.

That said, you do have a lot more to work with when you are dealing directly with the client's site. If you could manage the directory, you are just going to be that much ahead. And the link popularity effects of LS, yahoo, and dmoz are obvious.

Doing work on other people's domains also has its pitfalls. The main problem is that the client could more easily burn you ( that is an American saying for welching). I am sure it's happened to all of us. You help out a client, and then they say thanks a lot and drop your services.

If you are going to do direct work on the client's site, either get paid up front or have some type of strategy to keep them dependent. I actually do both. If a client plays games, I could shut off the majority his traffic without having to touch his server.

[WebGuerrilla]

Actually, I agree with you that there is still good traffic that can be collected with a doorway domain strategy. And there certainly is plenty of pit falls in cloaking from a client's site. Along with the potential of getting stiffed for payment, you also usually get quite a bit of lag time getting new pages put up or getting your IP file updated. When it's running om your own box everything works much better.

An approach I've used in the past to kind of have the best of both worlds is to host a subdomain of a client's site on my machine and then just cloak the home page on their server. The position of their home page is improved and all spiders are routed to the subdomain for additional content. The client likes it because they can gain new traffic while still pronoting their branded domain.

It also gives the client some assurance that should they terminate the contract, the traffic can't be resold to a competitor. (They can just terminate the A record). It makes me happy because I have 24/7 access and a bit more leverage when it comes to collecting money:)

Another benefit is that you will get a definite popularity bump using a somdomain of a site that already has incoming links. I have tested the same content both ways (new stand alone domain vs. client subdomain)and have found that the subdomain approach always ends up ranking better.

[Lello]

Hello,
firts of all thanks a lot for your answers WG and littleman which helped a lot! Interesting points of view but as always in this business no unique opinion. :)

>site has good content but is "spider >challenged"

WG: If you mean spider challenging in sense of dynamic generated pages, javascript, style sheets, etc. You are definitely right.

>to host a subdomain of a client's site on >my machine and then just cloak the home >page on their server.

WG if I understand correctly you mean: cloaking the default-page on www.clientsdomain.com (and installing a cl-script on their server) with links to your subdomain on the cloaked index-page. And then having on your subdomain further cloaked pages.

But where do you host the pages to be served to visitors? On your server or on the clients-server?

If you mirror the client's site on your subdomain (visitors pages) you might have trouble to synchronize content.

And what about the LP, in my (HUMBLE) opinion you might only get LP for the cloaked index-page on the customer's domain. What about the other pages on your subdomain?

More and more this subject is becoming higher science to me.... :)

Cheers
Lello

[WebGuerrilla]

No, you wouldn't mirror the client's content on the subdomain. (or at least I wouldn't). It would be difficult to keep everything current, especially if the client's content is dynamic.

As far as how you get the visitor back to the client's site, there are alot of different possibilities. You could just re-direct them server side and deliver them directly to the dynamic page, or you could serve a static page with a "The page you have requested has beem move here" kind of message. You could also add a JS re-direct to the page, so most peole would be sent automatically. You could also display the client's content in a frameset. There are alot of potential variations.

Regarding the LP, I personally don't believe that LP algos are only page specific. I have just seen too many situations where a large, popular site establishes new content on a subdomain and that content immediately jumps to the top (regardless of whether or not it is cloaked) despite the fact that there are no inbound links pointing to it.

If you setup a client this way, you will usually find that the cloaked home page will do well for your primary, most competitive phrases, and the subdomains will capture all the secondary traffic. And as littleman pointed out, that can be a significant amount of traffic, if properly developed.

The key is to really evaluate each situation separately and then develop a strategy that leverages all the strong points. For example, there are many industries that don't have any terms that are real competitive. For theses kind of situations, a doorway domain strategy can be more than enough.

However, if you are working with a client in a very competitive niche like software, rea estate, golf, etc. you will probablly need to consider delivering content from their main site.

All of theses variables is what makes our jobs so much fun :)