Is this a doorway page or not?

[whatson]

I have a client who runs an e-commerce site, and he wants to create a brochure style site for one of his product ranges. The site will contain a lot of good information and images on the product, and is completely legitimate.

However, they want to direct their visitors to the e-commerce pages for the products so they can order them online.

Is this bad?

[Str82u]

Probably no worse than affiliate links. A problem would be if it's a massive amount of links to the e-commerce site. The safest links would be ones directly to the "buy now" page but then it might also be misunderstood by the purchaser, not quite as legitimate in their eyes if they see they've been directed to another domain.

[tedster]

I've got a parallel situation with client - there about 100 products and links involved out of 1000 pages so it may not be as intense as your situation, but these sites have not seen a search problem.

Some people make this kind of link a nofollow - then it is 100% clear to Google taht you are not trying to manipulate the SERPs with the links.

[whatson]

Good one Tedster, I could do no follow. Although of course the link juice is always good, but so is being safe.