Using Gateway Pages Effectively and Responsibly

By Matthew L. Blevins

With the astronomical growth rate of the Internet and the web sites that are flooding server space around the world has inevitably come the desire for web site exposure and the subsequent popularity of search engines, often considered the most cost-efficient manner of web promotion available. While this is obvious, the methods of promoting sites to search engines are continuously evolving. Some promotion methods that may have originally been deemed acceptable are no longer considered so, while other "tricks" have become legitimate means of mainstream promotion. Remember when "invisible" text was the norm for the search engine promoter? Well, search engines put an end to that long ago, but they are now also willing to re-think their position on another common method that was once considered unacceptable - gateway pages.

Simply stated, gateway, or "doorway" pages, are HTML pages within a web site that are optimized to achieve high rankings in the search engines. These gateway pages are typically stored within the same directory as the index page of the site or, in some cases, function as the index page. The gateway page will have a link to the main page of the site (the page that the webmaster has designed as the "navigation" page) and, at times, will include a "Meta refresh" tag or Java redirect script to automatically take the user to this main page.

The concept of the gateway page is simple enough, and in recent months such pages have become an acceptable form of promoting sites to the major engines. There are, however, some important considerations that one should be aware of before designing and submitting a gateway page. Those who maintain search engines are very particular about what is submitted to their indexes. They may not always be capable of locating every site or page that bends or breaks their rules, but they are always looking for them, or programming their spiders to take note of them. It is therefore very important to design a gateway page in accordance with what the search engines deem acceptable. It is also worth noting that the aforementioned "Meta refresh" tag and the Java redirect script are usually not viable options for the gateway or any other page. It is acceptable to use such tags or scripts, but search engines typically do not like them, and AltaVista and Infoseek consider them to be "Spam."

In most cases, common sense prevails. For instance, a gateway page with a list of keywords and a link to the main page is obviously going to be considered "Spam" to a reviewer or a Meta crawler that is designed to spot such problems. The thing to remember when designing this entrance page for your site is that it should have a reasonable description of your site, outlining the products or services offered or the subject matter of a non-commercial or advertisement-driven site.

The description of the site should be well written, just like the text of your main page, and should incorporate your keywords in a skillful manner that is not overbearing. The gateway page should, if possible, include an image or logo (use 'ALT' text with it) and be designed so that it is at least somewhat pleasing from an aesthetic standpoint. Lastly, the page should incorporate carefully selected Meta tags (title, description, and keywords) that describe the content of the site and that match the text that is viewable by the user. When properly constructed and implemented, gateway pages can be a very effective means of achieving high rankings within the search engines.

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