A gateway page is a type of landing page. It is a search engine optimized web page highly focused on a particular keyword or phrase that contains hyperlinks pointing to relevant web pages within a website that offer a wide array of diverse information pertaining to the searched term. Just as the term implies, the web page acts as a gateway to deeper, more detailed content that can be found within the website.
Gateway pages are extremely useful for helping to orient site visitors interested in a particular product, service, or piece of information that may fall under a broader category. Websites that are organized by categories and sub-categories can create gateway pages to help the searcher find the specific type of information he is looking for, especially if he may have difficulty understanding exactly how to find it.
For example, a website that sells many types of computers and peripherals, such as ‘Laptops & Netbooks,’ ‘Desktop & All-in-One PCs,’ ‘Printers,’ ‘Ink & Toner,” ‘Accessories,’ and ‘Small Business Solutions,’ may create a gateway page for each of the larger product categories in order to ensure each one has effective ranking results in the search engines. The hyperlinks that appear on the gateway page for a particular product category are also search engine optimized and point the user to the relevant sub-category pages. This type of search engine optimization strategy works well when dealing with multiple categories and sub-categories of information.
With White Hat seo practices, the principle objective of a gateway page is to help guide the end-user effectively through the website to arrive at the information that he seeks. Unfortunately, Black Hat seo uses gateway pages to trick search engines and end-users by optimizing for a particular search term and then providing hyperlinks that point to irrelevant web pages, often unsolicited advertising or pornography pages. This practice is called ‘spamdexing.’
