If you are still tempted to use such a technique, either for attracting different search engines, appearing to be an authority site on a particular keyword, or split testing content and on-page SEO, there are two primary negative aspects of multiple doorway pages that you must consider.

A single target for your keyword

Let’s imagine a scenario where both pageA and pageB are optimised for a particular keyword, each with slightly different content, but very similar URLs, page titles, and other on-page optimised elements.

Search engines will discover and index both pages, but do not generally want to provide more than one result to the searcher, particularly when the content on both is very similar.

They need to make a decision about which one is the originating, authoritative page for that particular keyword. Due to the number of ranking factors used in search engine calculations, they may select the wrong one!

Duplicate content

Much is discussed – and misunderstood – regarding duplicate content, but the key issue is similar to above. If two pages (defined as two web pages reachable by unique URLs) have substantially similar or identical content, a search engine will not display both pages in results for a particular search. It will decide on the authoritative page for that content and filter the other out of the search results.

How do you target more than one keyword on a single page?

Simply: research and strategy.

Each individual page must be focused around a specific set of keywords, with a single keyword – or “key-phrase” of course – as the primary focus. Keyword selection is a whole other discussion, but it is important to isolate what is th most important keyword for that page and optimise for that.

The additional keywords in the selection should then be used within the page content as they will be seen as associated terms and will be found in context – an increasingly important consideration.

Getting the balance right

Keyword research is everything in determining the most effective focus for a page. Balancing potential traffic volume against how difficult it might be to rank for a keyword is critical in determining the choice of primary keyword over the additional, secondary terms.

There is no hard and fast rule; it all depends on the broader range of of keywords within your niche – the “keyword space”.

For example, KeywordA may potentially generate the most traffic, but could also be the term for which most of your competition are fighting. Ranking well for KeywordB might prove far more lucrative in traffic generation than ranking poorly for KeywordA – this is very often the case where KeywordA is a broad, generic term. Because KeywordA and KeywordB are associated with each other, ranking well – becoming an authority – for KeywordB may also help to drive some traffic for KeywordA.

Focus on the most effective

A single web page that is optimised around a single, primary target keyword, will stand a much better chance of becoming an authority for that keyword.

Choose carefully how to split primary keywords between different pages.

Take care in not focusing more than one page on very similar terms.

Be strategic in page/keyword selection so that each individual page contains absolute minimal references to keywords you are targeting on other pages.

Interestingly, the Adwords tool itself does not attempt to block the actual addition of trademarked terms to an Adwords campaign. There are, of course, situations where use of a tademark is legitimate.

De-optimisation?

The first thought was to remove as many instance of the troublesome keywords from each of the ranking pages. The difficulty is that these brand names are legitimately used in the pages, and often are part of the main target key phrases. Removing them would reduce legibility and context of the page for visitors.

Reducing the on-page frequency of the keywords was certainly possible – if the resulting effects on SERPs was unknown – but backlinks were another matter. Incoming lnks to these pages also contained the troublesome keywords, and getting all these changed would be tricky and again damage legibility and relevance of the link to users.

Sometimes SEO does not have the answer

It took a non SEO person to come up with a very different solution to the problem. Stepping away from an SEO-focused solution, what if the search traffic generated from the troublesome branded searches was simply redirected to the client sites? Not SEO, but may resolve the problem.

Whether this becomes a viable solution or not, it was a big lesson in how focusing too narrowly on the problem, and forming early assumptions on where the solution might lie, clouded the creative, problem solving process. Sometimes, you just need to step away from SEO and broaden the possible solutions.

Search keyword selection appears on the surface to be a straightforward process: select
those that have high search volume but low competition. What clouds this process is our definition of what constitutes “competition”.

The question of optimisation

Google measures a number of criteria in determining a web page’s returned position for a particular search term. Understanding such criteria and ensuring a web page fulfills as much as possible, by whatever means, is what SEO is all about.

When you perform a search on Google, you will discover how many other sites are competing for visibility for that search term – and this can be a pretty big number. But are you truly competing against all of them?

The top pages returned on a search are those that Google has determined best fit their criteria. SEO is an active process of enhancing the criteria therefore it is logical to assume that you are competing against only those pages that have been – intentionally or inadvertently – optimised.

SO I bet you are asking, how one might determine the number of sites that are optimised – i.e. are true competition.

intitle and inanchor

Here’s the theory: optimising a web page often includes using target keywords in the page title and also frequently in clickable hyperlinks within that page. One might think therefore, that if we ask Google to return only pages that include the search term in the page title and in hyperlinks, we might more accurately determine the number of optimised pages.

Theory is nice, but the reality is a gross inaccuracy with what Google returns for such searches. A little digging into the actual pages returned by intitle: and inanchor: filtered search demonstrates how unreliable this really is.

Broad search vs exact search

Perform your Google search with the term surrounded by quotes, and you will generally see a much smaller number of competing web pages than a normal, broad search. Look at broad results and exact results side by side, and you get some insight into the competitive space. I believe the closer the exact search count is to the broad search count, the higher level of competition for that term.

PPC (Adwords) competition

Here’s an additional thought: if people are prepared to pay real money to have their names show up for a search terms – sometimes a great deal of money per click-through – then that term is certainly competitive (this notion came out of a recent meeting with an SEO guru). Should we, therefore, take the number and level of competition for Adwords placement into account when assessing the competitive landscape of a keyword?

As an additional criteria it seems to make sense, but the nature of those paying advertisers must also be taken into account. For example, are they corporates vying for brand-names, or are they your direct online competitors. Each presents a greater or lesser challenge.

Conclusion

I warned you are the beginning that there were no specific answers in this post and despite weeks of exploring ideas, I am nowhere near providing a definitive solution.

A no-brainer solution might be little more than a pipe-dream, but I still believe there may be a definable means of at least help in narrowing the field of potentially profitable keywords to those that are most worthy of further exploration.