SEO (search engine optimisation)
and web-positioning tutorials,
tricks, tips, and techniques.

'Hallway' Pages

by Ammon Johns

A hallway page is like an index of urls that you want a search engine to spider. It has the primary function of acting as an list of all the pages you want a spider to 'crawl' and index for you.

The reason we use hallway pages, is that many search engines have a limit upon how many direct submissions you make make within a set time period (sometimes just 1 page per day). By submitting a hallway page, you are indirectly submitting every page that is listed on it.

Using a this method of indirect submissions for doorway pages does extend the time it takes before they get indexed. However, on the positive side, some engines seem to 'reward' pages that they find through links as opposed to those that are directly submitted.

A hallway page does not need to be optimised for ranking, indeed, you don't really want a hallway page to be the first page people arrive at usually. That said, many hallway pages are designed in the form of a site map page, and thus are fully functional for view to the public as well as helping get pages spidered.

For greatest effect, you may wish to design your hallway page to be a site map and if so the most effective form is to think a little of how directory listings look. Make a web directory of all your pages.

Each page should have its own listing, a paragraph, that tells the page title, the description of content, and the full url.