how bad are doorways *really*?

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how bad are doorways really?

does a doorway limit the pr?

michael heraghty

1:31 pm on May 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

Pardon my naivety, but I've just learned that a doorway is one of the cardinal sins, according to Google's own guidelines for webmasters.

Now, I've had a front page to my site for around three years (http://www.example.com), basically because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the site. I started a blog about six months ago, and put it into a subdomain (http://www.example.com/public/), because at the time it was just "an experiement".

Well, now the experiment has become the raison d'etre for the entire domain ... and I'm wondering whether I should move the blog to the homepage. (I'm using Movable Type, and don't even know if I can do that.)

I'm tempted to leave everything as it is. But will that mean my blog page will forever have a Pr "glass ceiling" (it currently has a Pr of 6, while the homepage has a Pr of 5).

Advice appreciated!

[edited by: Woz at 1:40 pm (utc) on May 22, 2003]
[edit reason] no URLs please. [/edit]

John_Creed

1:39 pm on May 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

That's a splash page, which is perfectly fine and legal.

A "doorway page" is a page designed solely for the search engines, serves no purpose for the users, and is usually cluttered with keywords.

HyperGeek

2:55 pm on May 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

Make your blog's index the home page. Even though a spalsh page is nice for you to look at, it's just an extra click that forced on anyone that visits your site.

More often than not, people will either wish you took the splash page away, or they will just bookmark an internal page within your site so they don't have to see it every visit.

Now that your index is your home page, you can get inbound links for mywidgetblog.com *and* for internal pages within that site (according to subjects of interest.)

BigDave

3:22 pm on May 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

Leave it the way it is. That is not the "doorway" page that google is referring to.

If you move your blog to the home page you will lose all those incoming links that you already have.

Pegasus

4:04 pm on May 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

Losing an amount of PageRank due to the damping factor (85% AFAIK) is undesirable in my opinion.

I'd definitely have the main page of the site be the one that people go straight to.

BigDave

4:11 pm on May 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

The damping factor, the amount lost when passed on would be 15% (a guess based on the PageRank papers).

The thing is that he already has most of the links coming in to the current blog location, and few coming in to his home page. If he just moves that page he will lose all that PR which will get a 404. His home page will lose any PR that he gets from his blog, which might be a significant portion of that PR5.

I would leave the blog where it is, and work on generating more related content for the home page. Get links to both and you will boost both.

HyperGeek

8:02 pm on May 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

He can also create a "Best of My Blog" page and use it as his homepage or a placeholder for the blog info if he decides to move it.

If he does move the blog to act as the home page (better now than a year from now with a bigger blog), he can always throw a link onto the "Best of..." archive page (with links to his favorite entries) to lead the readers to the newest blog entry.

The idea is to do whatever is best to structure the site in the best way possible before it grows too large for that structure to change, and to avoid a 404 at any cost.

The only truly acceptable splash page is one with directional links or a login screen (unless the entire site is a one page flash presentation).

A page only stating that "THIS IS THESITE.COM" is just dead weight unless there's a *reason* for it.

killroy

8:08 pm on May 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

jsutr 301 redirect the dubdir from example.com/blogplace to example.com

all pr will be preserved and passed on (within an update or two) and external links will go to the right place. then you can contact your backlinks to have them fixed in your own good time.

Slade

9:28 pm on May 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

killroy,

301'ing is my standard answer to this situation. I was wondering if there was a good reason no one else had mentioned it yet...

michael heraghty

2:28 pm on May 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

I would leave the blog where it is, and work on generating more related content for the home page. Get links to both and you will boost both.

Okay, thanks for the clarification and all the suggestions, I think I will follow the one above.

Just one more question though: what exactly is a "301 redirect"?

heini

2:38 pm on May 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

Michael, there is lots of info on 301's. mostly in Website Technology. A sitesearch will turn up numerous threads, most of them with the exact code needed and where to implement it.

michael heraghty

10:11 pm on May 28, 2003 (gmt 0)

Okay, thanks Heini!

nancyb

10:36 pm on May 28, 2003 (gmt 0)

using a 301 will work, but you will still loose all the links you currently have to your blog because a 301 doesn't transfer links. Unless you have the time to contact all those linking to you AND they have the time and inclination to change all the links to your new home page you will suffer a PR drop. And, even if you have the time and they have the inclination, it could take several months to regain the PR you lost by using a 301.