Dmoz Listing and Doorway pages

[alford]

Here's the situation -

There is a site with doorway pages. Most of the industry keywords are enjoying top 10 positions on Yahoo and MSN. Google remains elusive.

Some points:

1. There is no listing of the site in DMOZ.
2. Some doorway pages show up in Google results, but only on 3rd page and beyond.
3. Google rankings can be enhanced if a listing in DMOZ is procured.
4. DMOZ listings don’t look possible with the doorway pages (correct me if I am wrong)
5. If doorways are removed, the site will loose all ranks in Yahoo and MSN.

Can someone please show the best way to go for getting top results on Google also, (no advice solicited on removing doorways) without compromising Yahoo and MSN positions?

Is it possible to get a listing in DMOZ without the editors discovering the doorways?

Thanks in Advance.

[Daria_Goetsch]

Most ODP editors are going to be looking for content when they manually review the website. From my experience if there isn't much content you stand less of a chance of getting in the directory. I'm an editor at ODP but only in a small hobby category. What I look for is good content, looking through the entire website to see the quality of the website and what it will provide to ODP visitors. Since there are plenty of spam submissions made to ODP I'm guessing most editors will be able to spot a doorway page pretty easily.

[alford]

Thanks Daria, another huge challenge is that I want to transition out these doorway pages into content pages. The idea is to keep the white meta info intact and remove all the black info and techniques. Then fill these pages with real content and link them from the main website. But the challenge is that how do I do this seamlessly without loosing my ranks on Yahoo and MSN.

I also want to deploy url optimization on these pages. This would mean facing the risk of doling out 404s to leads generated from current listings on both the engines. What's your take on redirects. Do I face a position discount situation on Yahoo and MSN if I fix the .htaccess?

[alford]

BTW, I have parallel threads running here for more info:

http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/foru...061#post187061

and

http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/viewt...=123938#123938

and

http://searchengineforums.com/apps/w...d::1112980331/

Moderators, please let me know if there are any issues with posting urls here. The idea is just to provide more info.

[NFFC]

>1. There is no listing of the site in DMOZ.

No big deal.

>2. Some doorway pages show up in Google results, but only on 3rd page and beyond.

You are textually challenged.

>3. Google rankings can be enhanced if a listing in DMOZ is procured.

No SE gives more weight to a DMOZ listing than Yahoo, if you are doing well there....

>4. DMOZ listings don’t look possible with the doorway pages (correct me if I am wrong)

If its good content they should list it, if its not they won't. They lie about that but that should be the basis you submit on.

>5. If doorways are removed, the site will loose all ranks in Yahoo and MSN.

Every page is a doorway. Sounds like the only problem you have is that your doorways are crap. I'd vote for you stressing less re: DMOZ and more about being lazy.

[Robert_Charlton]

Every page is a doorway.

NFFC beat me to this. Yes, any page on your site can be used as a doorway.

I'm making a bunch of assumptions about your current doorway pages, since you don't say much about them. I'm going to assume that they're on your main domain, and that they probably don't have any external inbound links.

With regard to your own site, I'm also going to guess that the doorways are just "orphan" pages, leading into the site but not part of the general site navigation themselves. As such, Google isn't going to think that you or anyone else values them very highly; and as NFFC suggests, there may be good reason for this.

The hard part about building "doorways" that are part of your site is that you've actually got to make them worth reading and worth linking to... and they can't be too redundant, or your visitors will get bored and leave.

If they are already ranking on other engines, I'd simply leave the urls the same, add some decent content, and incorporate them into your site structure, linking to them prominently enough that they get some decent PR distribution with relevant link text.

[NFFC]

>If they are already ranking on other engines, I'd simply leave the urls the same, add some decent content, and incorporate them into your site structure

Thats what I meant to say Thanks Robert!

[Daria_Goetsch]

Originally Posted by NFFC

>If they are already ranking on other engines, I'd simply leave the urls the same, add some decent content, and incorporate them into your site structure

Thats what I meant to say Thanks Robert!

Yep, exactly what Bob and NFFC said is the way to go.

[alford]

If they are already ranking on other engines, I'd simply leave the urls the same,

Just cannot do this because the files have been named in a pretty obvious way... don't want a competitor to blow the whistle. Also don't want to miss the benefits of optimized urls. When the job is to be done, might as well go about it the best way.

So my Question again:

I also want to deploy url optimization on these pages. This would mean facing the risk of doling out 404s to leads generated from current listings on both the engines. What's your take on redirects. Do I face a position discount situation on Yahoo and MSN if I fix the .htaccess?

Any recommendations?

[alford]

NFFC,

>1. There is no listing of the site in DMOZ. No big deal.

Here is what David Callan has to say about this and he is not the only one who thinks that way:

http://www.akamarketing.com/open-dir...ial-guide.html

n particular, a listing in the ODP directory can be very advantageous for sites wishing to rank high in the Google search engine. Google not only uses the Open Directory Projects data for the Google Directory located at http://directory.google.com but it also 'mixes' the data with its own to determine where sites should be ranked in the search results. A listing in the ODP will help boost Googles view of how important your site is (ie. boost your Pagerank) and hence help to increase your ranking for your chosen keywords and key phrases.

[alford]

NFFC,

>3. Google rankings can be enhanced if a listing in DMOZ is procured. No SE gives more weight to a DMOZ listing than Yahoo, if you are doing well there....

Are you suggesting that all search engines have the same algorithm? What about umpteen other checks?

[NFFC]

>Are you suggesting that all search engines have the same algorithm?

No, what I'm suggesting is No SE gives more weight to a DMOZ listing than Yahoo, if you are doing well there....

[alford]

Some other questions if you scroll up NFFC, and perhaps you could elaborate on your Yahoo assertion.

[Robert_Charlton]

David Callan: A listing in the ODP will help boost Googles view of how important your site is (ie. boost your Pagerank) and hence help to increase your ranking for your chosen keywords and key phrases.

This is simplistic. All sorts of links will boost you in Google's view, and some of them might be better than ODP. Doorways or no doorways, though, you may die a slow death while waiting for that one ODP listing and waiting for it to appear on the ODP feed sites. It's a good idea to also look at the rest of the web.

ODP is not magic, though I think that some years back... maybe before the tool bar appeared... people thought it was, that ODP links were different from other links. A lot depends on what category you might be in and on what your ODP title text is liable to be.

That said, if you turned your doorways into good pages, I'm not sure why you'd have any trouble with ODP editors because of them.

Originally Posted by alford

Just cannot do this because the files have been named in a pretty obvious way... don't want a competitor to blow the whistle. Also don't want to miss the benefits of optimized urls.

If you're ashamed of the filenames (l-o-n-g with lots of hyphens?), you might try changing one of them to see if it makes any difference. If the file name is that long, it's possible that the phrase really isn't that hard to rank on anyway.

But if you're basically trying to hide what your site is about, I'd forget ODP. Again, your description of the situation is so evasive that it's hard to tell what your concerns are.