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Some say they are needed to provide "spider friendly" script while others say they are considered spamming and will cause a site to not be indexed at all.
This is a big diference! What do you recommend?
Tom
As it has been said many times before, what is good for the user is good for Google. Anything else runs the risk of being considered Spam by the search engines, and may well be treated as such.
JP
Some say they are needed to provide "spider friendly" script
Definitely not true.
they are considered spamming and will cause a site to not be indexed at all.
Depends to an extent on how you define "doorway pages" and which search engines you're talking about. But in general the technique of creating dozens of separate highly optimized text-only doorway pages each focusing on specific keywords is both (1) considered to be spamming, and (2) not as effective as it once was anyway.
Instead, think of every page on your site as a doorway to the site. Optimize each of those pages to specific keywords. What's important today is that that the pages are fully integrated into your site. "Orphaned" doorway pages, without links pointing to them, won't rank well or likely even be indexed at search engines like Google.
Doorway & Hallway pages are promoted by such well known software programs as "PositionWeaver" and "Dynamic Submissions by Apex Pacific".
To JP's comment, I think the pages are "good for users" (viewers) since they help point to a relivant sites without adding volumns of script to the actual site pages.
To JayC's comments, the above software links doorway pages by way of hallways pages from several pages on the main web site.
I guess that bottom line is not to us them!
Any other comments or suggestions?
Tom
Where people get in trouble is by cranking out dozens (or hundreds, etc.) of pages that are essentially the same except for the keywords. These pages themselves have little content useful to the visitor, and serve only to direct the visitor to another page. These are the spammy doorways that can earn you penalties.
Bottom line: there's nothing wrong with creating real pages targeted for particular searches, but don't mass-produce pages with little or no useful content.
(BTW, the argument that a mass-produced doorway page serves the user by helping lead him to the desired content is an old one that has been discredited. This isn't all that different from the "cloaking is good" argument that claims by feeding keyword-rich content only to search engines a site is doing everyone a favor. Neither argument is accepted by the search engines, which is the only constituency that counts.)
