Doorway Pages

A doorway page exists only to rank for a specific keyword, then redirect or funnel you somewhere else without offering original value. Think of it as a fake storefront that points to the real shop behind it. Google treats doorway pages as spam, full stop. I would never build one because they waste your crawl budget, dilute site quality, and risk a manual action.

Here is a worked example with numbers. You run a plumbing business in London. You create fifty pages: 'plumber in Camden', 'plumber in Islington', and so on. Each page has the same 300-word blurb, identical images, and the only difference is the neighbourhood name swapped in the first paragraph. Every page redirects to a single booking form on the homepage. That is a textbook doorway pattern. Fifty URLs, fifty keywords targeted, zero unique value. Google’s 2015 algorithmic update, which I have seen hit sites first-hand, targets precisely this behaviour. The fix is not to delete every page but to rewrite each one with local references, local reviews, and specific service details for that area. If you cannot do that, consolidate into one page and use a [canonical tag](/canonical-url/) to manage duplicates. If your page does not help a user make a decision or take an action without being shunted elsewhere, you have a doorway page.

Doorway pages matter most in three scenarios. First, local SEO: this is where I see them most often. A business with ten or twenty city pages that all say the same thing except the city name is building a doorway pattern, even if no redirect exists. Google's spam policy does not require a redirect; it just looks at intent and value. A legitimate location page must offer something unique for that place – a team member's name, a local event, a specific service area.

Second, affiliate sites. If you create separate pages for 'buy running shoes', 'best running shoes', 'running shoes review' and all three redirect to the same Amazon link, you are making doorway pages. The decision rule: if a user lands on your page and cannot get the information they came for without being redirected, it is a doorway.

Third, programmatic SEO done poorly. I have seen templates that generate hundreds of pages by swapping a keyword into a fixed template. That is a grey area, but it becomes a doorway if every page leads to the same product or service page. The counter-argument: some people say city pages work because they capture location-specific search volume. That is true only if each page has unique content – a map of that area, local case studies, or different customer testimonials. Otherwise you are better off with a single page that uses structured data to signal relevance. Check your [website structure](/website-structure/) to see if you have grown thin pages. If you use redirects from these pages, audit them with a [301 redirect](/301-redirect/) check. The safest approach is to avoid the pattern altogether by writing one strong page per distinct offering.

I used to think doorway pages were only the territory of black-hat SEO agencies. I was wrong. Legitimate businesses create them all the time, often without realising it. The classic example is the local franchise that builds pages for every postcode. The marketing team thinks they are helping local search, but because every page says the same thing, Google sees them as doorways. I have made this mistake myself: I once built fifty city pages for a client, all with the same boilerplate text and a single image. It took a manual action to make me change my approach.

I also assumed that as long as the page was on the same domain and did not redirect, it was safe. That is not true. Google’s policy looks at whether the page exists primarily to capture search traffic, regardless of redirects. A page that offers no unique value and just lists the same services as every other page is still a doorway.

Another thing I confused was doorway pages with landing pages. A landing page targets a specific user intent and offers immediate, valuable content – a guide, a calculator, a detailed comparison. A doorway page does none of that; it is a shell created for rankings. After auditing a client site with over two hundred near-identical service pages, I saw the cumulative harm: wasted crawl budget, diluted authority, and a ranking drop across all pages. I now recommend a thorough [SEO audit](/seo-audit/) to catch these patterns early. If you are doing programmatic content, treat each page as a unique entity or risk looking like a doorway farm.