Doorway page

What a doorway page means

Doorway pages are pages created mainly to rank for particular searches, often very similar ones, that then funnel visitors elsewhere or offer little unique value. A classic example is dozens of "plumber in [town]" pages with identical text and only the town name changed. Google lists doorway abuse in its spam policies.

Seen in practice

A roofer has 40 near-identical town pages. He replaces them with one strong service-area page listing the areas he covers, plus pages for his three busiest towns that show real jobs, local housing types and genuine reviews from customers there. It's less content, but every page now has a reason to exist.

Why it matters for your content

Service-area businesses are often tempted, or advised, to create a page for every town they cover. Done carelessly, that's exactly the pattern Google describes as doorways, and it can lead to those pages being ignored or the site being treated as spammy. Done well, with real local content, location pages are fine.

Checking your own pages

Pick two of your location or service variation pages and read them side by side. If you could swap the names and nobody would notice, they're doorway-like. A simple check is to paste both into a text comparison tool. Large blocks of identical wording are a warning sign.

Traps to avoid

• Creating location pages for places you don't serve.
• Swapping town names in otherwise identical copy.
• Building lots of pages that all push visitors to the same contact form with no added value.
• Assuming that because competitors do it, it's safe.

Related content terms

• Thin content: Pages with little original value, a common problem with mass-produced pages.
• Duplicate content: Same or near-identical content on multiple URLs.
• Local SEO: Optimising to appear in local pack and localised organic results.