Need clarification on what is a landing page vs. doorway page

[DenverDude]

Hello everyone -

I just became a PRO member today and wanted to say hello and ask this question...

I am launching a new product, but 6 months before I created 4 different domains with landing pages to "prime" my SEO for the keywords I am trying to pursue.

Now that I have launched my new product, it resides on the main domain name (let's call it "MainDomain.com"). Here's my dilemma...

I want to create landing pages on each of the different domains for my PPC and optimized organic search traffic. For example, on one of the other domains (let's call it "LandingDomain1.com"), I have created a page to optimize for the keyword "event planning software" and sending my PPC traffic for "event planning software" there as well as my email campaigns. This page has original content that I have written for it (it's not duplicate content used elsewhere), but it also has navigation and links pointing to MainDomain.com, which is where we convert and collect registrations.

My question is, will this activity be considered a doorway page even though I'm using it for a landing page for a particular audience? And, if it could be considered a doorway page, would I be better off moving all these optimized landing pages to my MainDomain.com and then doing a 301 redirect from those other domains to the MainDomain.com.

Your input is much appreciated ... thanks.

[Keszi]

Hi Jeff,

I have imagined your situation and reminded me of a past client of mine, who asked me to do the same. But I will tell you the same thing as I have told him back then: Why to focus doorway pages instead of good landing pages on your main domain?

Think about the main difference between Doorway pages and Landing pages as the following:

• Doorway pages are made for spamming the index of Search Engines, creating pages to rank for a specific keyword/keyword phrase but afterwards you are fooling the visitor, because they will need to go further in order to reach the goal of their visits. The doorway pages will have a negative User Experience!
• Landing pages are created in order to focus a product/service of yours and while the visitor enter the page, they will reach the goal of their visits. The landing pages will have a positive User Experience!

There are two very good articles related for this two expressions, maybe take a few minutes and read them through:

1. Landing Pages
2. Doorway Pages

Instead of the Doorway Pages (Domains) I would advice you to try focusing the main domain for quality landing pages with quality content.

I hope that helped,

Istvan