How Google's Doorway Pages Update Affects Local SEO

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Awesome Local Folks!

I thought I'd take a proactive stance and start a thread on the new doorway pages update from Google, as I feel there will be questions coming up about this here in the forum:

Here's the update announcement:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html

And here's the part that will make local business owners and Local SEOs take a second glance at this:

Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages:

Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic?

I think this will naturally lead to questions about the practice of creating local/city landing pages. At this point, my prediction is that this will come down to high quality vs. crummy quality pages of this type. In fact, after chatting briefly with Andrew Shotland, I'm leaning a bit toward seeing the above language as being strongly geared toward directory type sites and large franchises. I recommend reading Andrew's post about his take on this, as I think he's on the right track:

http://www.localseoguide.com/googles-about-to-close-your-local-doorway-pages/

So, I'm feeling at this point that if you've made the right efforts to develop unique, high quality local landing pages, you should be good unless you are an accidental casualty of an over-zealous update. We'll see! If anyone has thoughts to contribute on this thread, I hope they will, and if lots of questions start coming up about this here in the community, feel free to link back to this thread in helping your fellow community members Thanks, all!

[RyanPurkey]

Great update Miriam. There are a lot of things site owners can add to these types of pages to help with unique content: drive time to the nearest branch from City / Neightborhood X; mobile service schedules in City / Neighborhood X; Images of service radius; highly localized testimonials, etc. Will be interesting to see the impact with franchisees..

[adammason]

Hi Miriam

The other aspect of this that got me thinking when I saw the update was around multiple sites for the same business. I have seen this in several niches where the same business has 2 or 3 different websites ranking on page 1 for their main term. Each of these sites has unique content etc however they are all linked via the same address. I have been waiting for Google to resolve this issue as it is technically a doorway page unique just more sophisticated. It wouldn't be hard for them to devalue a site if they see it ranking well and it is the same business as another site ranking.

I wonder if they will deal with this issue in this update.

[LindaBuquet]

Thanks Miriam, we've been discussing in the G+ Pro community all day and I'm working on a forum post for tomorrow. I have Andrew's post in there and I'll include a link to your post here as well.

[MiriamEllis]

Agree with you, Ryan, that creativity is so key. One thing I have long stressed to my own clients is that owning a website = having become a publisher. You want to publish great stuff - not junk.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Adam,

Good comment! I'm also thinking about the multi-site scenario - particularly the multi-mini-site scenario. I've never been a fan of this approach and it does seem like the update could be applied to this scenario. Not sure yet ... but could be.

[MiriamEllis]

That's great, Linda! I bet you'll be getting stories from your community about things they see happening with this. Really glad you'll be covering it.

[rodwag67]

Any updates on this topic?  Thanks!

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Rod,

While there hasn't really been any more news that I'm aware of on this, you might like to check out the thread on Linda Buquet's forum, which has some additional discussion and some other links in it, for further reading:

http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/29401-google-warns-about-doorway-page-algo-update-could-affect-local.html

[LindaBuquet]

Thanks for sharing Miriam!

[rodwag67]

What are your thoughts if local landing pages are created similar to the gybo.com pages?

http://www.gybo.com/pennsylvania/ is one example (my state) - thanks for the link Miriam!

[MiriamEllis]

Hmm... that link is redirecting me to a homepage.

[rodwag67]

Google updated - now it goes to city/town: https://www.gybo.com/pa/norristown (after you put in your town)

So I'm thinking this is in line with what we currently do for town landing pages.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Rod,

I'm trying to understand what this service does. I looked up a random business in it and it simply seems to be giving a sense of how the business is listed on Google. I'm not seeing actual landing pages. Is there something particular that you are looking at on this site that concerns you in regards to doorway pages?

[rodwag67]

I'd like to hear the differences between doorway pages and landing pages.  I see Google utilizing multiple local landing pages, so if we follow creating pages similar to this we should be fine?

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Rod,

This is Google's def. of Doorway Pages: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721311

If you read through that carefully, I think the conclusion you may draw is that the difference between what Google is describing as a doorway page and what you may hear Local SEOs referring to as 'local landing pages' or 'city landing pages' or what have you, would be uniqueness and quality. This is my reading of this, anyway.

If you are going to create landing pages, as in the case of a local business serving multiple cities, I would suggest making maximum effort to ensure that each page is a thorough, unique, stand-alone resource for visitors. Don't throw up a bunch of thin, similar pages. Go for uniqueness and high quality. Hope this helps.

[rodwag67]

Thanks Miriam!

[joanna_mcd]

Miriam,

Thanks for jumping on this - very helpful to see some info already being aggregated and questions answered. I know I'm a little late to the party, but it sounds to me like you'd still recommend that businesses (such as a bank, clothing retailer, etc.) that have one business but locations in multiple cities and/or states, create location specific landing pages that match up with individual google+ business pages?

Obviously, each page has elements like a unique description and service set list as appropriate, unique hours/timezone, potentially customer reviews, unique driving directions from major areas, etc. Essentially - true content users would be looking at.

My understanding is this is still the "best practice" path for ranking in local pack and/or queries that drive location-specfic serps. Accurate?

Thanks again!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Joanna,

Yes - I would still recommend creating a unique page on your site for each location out of which you operate, and making maximum effort to ensure that the content on each page is unique and helpful.

[joanna_mcd]

Thanks Miriam