Is this proper use of Landing Pages?

or will SE's spank me?

[Storyman]

Let's say you have three landing pages (index_1, index_2, index_3). All three look like you home page except that they target different keywords.

All three landing pages link to the index page when the home button is clicked, but other than that all of the links for index, index_1, index_2, and index_3 link to same pages.

The only way for anyone to find the landing pages is through the site map, which is the way the spiders will locate the pages.

Is this approach acceptable from a search engine's point of view? What are the pros and cons of this method?

If you have used this approach please share your experience.

[ogletree]

The only con is the pages may not be enough differnt to avoid a dup penalty. They won't ban you for that.

[Robert Charlton]

What are the pros and cons of this method?

As ogletree suggests, if the pages are too similar, and it sounds like they might be, dupe content may well be a problem.

Additionally, because they're getting their only internal inbound from your sitemap, they're not going to get much of a share of the site's PageRank distribution or conferred internal linking reputation... and because they're not well integrated into the site, they're not going to be seen as important by the search engines.

Also, because visitors navigating your site are not likely to see them in the course of browsing, it's unlikely that the pages are going to attract natural external inbound links.

It doesn't sound like you're thinking about putting much effort into making these unique and informative pages at any rate. If you were, it would be a shame to hide them as you're essentially thinking of doing.

I can't think of any pros for this method, at least not as you've described what you're planning to do.

Essentially, what you're talking about creating are almost-orphaned doorway pages. Take a look at my long post on this thread about doorways. While it's not exactly replying to your question, it touches a bunch on why your scheme isn't a good one....

When is a door not a door?
When it's ajar. But seriously - about doorway pages...
[webmasterworld.com...]

[Wlauzon]

An example of what is NOT a proper landing page (yes this is a real page):

"Requirements

If you have a pop-up blocker installed, it must be disabled!
You might need a javascript enabled browser for my website to function.
To be able to access all features, you must have a browser that can handle redirects (huh?).
This website is designed with Windows XP, and Internet Explorer, and it may not run properly on any operating system, or browser.
Do you understand these requirements?"