Good Practice, Doorway or Spam

[CPL]

I am currently going through the process of making my website live. Basically it's a portal with over 500 subscribing pub and bar websites. One particular pub manager has his own domain name example greatpub.co.uk but has never built a website and wants to know if he could redirect the domain name to his domain name on the portal so that greatpub.co.uk opens a website like this Pub Website on my domain.

My initial thoughts were great:-

• He only has to update one website.
• Only pay's £20 per year for the domain.
• Doesn't have to pay for anything other than the £15 per month he pays me.
• He can give anyone greatpub.co.uk as his web address instead of a long query string.
• It's obviously a related link into his venue inside the Pub and Bar Network which is good for all the obvious reasons too. Win/Win I would presume However:-

Although we would do it for legitimate reasons and feel that it's arguably good practice for someone who don't want to be bothered with all the other stuff. Will search engines find this a spammy tactic example greatpub.co.uk as a doorway page etc. Will we be penalised at all? Or, is it simply a good/bad idea? Any advice greatly appreciated.

[incrediblehelp]

Not sure why would you do that? The value of your website to the visitors and search engines is to find info/reviews on the pub and then click over to the pub if they like.

[CPL]

Not sure I understand your meaning incrediblehelp. The last thing we want is visitors leaving our portal to go to their own pub or bar website.

• I need visitors to contact the venue direct from our site so that we can provide evidence of the site working for them.
• Check out a few pub or bar websites and see how out of date they are. Websites in this portal will last 90 days and they will be removed if they are not updated. They pay me for the priviledge to "bollock" them if they don't update .

I was hoping you could tell me if it was a good or bad idea to have greatpub.co.uk redirect straight to greatpub inside the portal. It seems to me that it would be beneficial to the licensee because of the reasons I mentioned in the previous post and beneficial to me because it introduces a possible new face to the network and would give me a potentially "valuable" and "related" link - greatpub.co.uk - to my site. (probably doesn't).

Even if it doesn't and it helps out the guy + saves him some work + gives me extra visitors + give the customer what they're looking for = why not? We all win don't we? My question is really, is it me that only sees this? Am I being naive? will I be penalised in search engines?
Hope this clarifies

[incrediblehelp]

OK so the pub redirects to you. Well I would say it doesnt matter much at all from your perspective. Not sure why the guy would do this, but yes it would add some temporary traffic to your website and what ever links he had might be passed onto your website.

[nickyoung]

Take unused domains and link em to your site? I can see why you would ask if it hurts search rankings for your site and theirs...I want to know this too. But to put those domains to some form or use is definitely good. I know many businesses that have domains, continue to advertise their domain with their address, and yet they have no website!! However, I don't believe it's right to directly make their domain point to your site...It would be more appropriate to develop a site for them, and possible even share the data from your site, on their new website. I am going to be doing something quite similar myself for about the same monthly price. I'll PM you. Maybe we can share ideas.

[CPL]

Thanks again for the posts:-

Not sure why the guy would do this..

The idea of pointing their domain greatpub.co.uk directly to their website within my portal is to save them them hassle of building and maintaining their own page/site. They have a fully working one with animoto video, menu's, wine lists, photo's, managed events and them nights etc. within a searchable pub and bar network. Easy maintenance which they update themselves through a CMS, affordable and hassle free in addition to us finding them the traffic and doing their marketing.

Well I would say it doesnt matter much at all from your perspective..

Ok, what if a nasty site wanted to link in the same way. Could I stop it? Would the search engines penalise my site?

It would be more appropriate to develop a site for them, and possible even share the data from your site, on their new website

If I feed visitors to their website (which they don't want to maintain anyway) how do I provide real evidence (not hits) that my site is putting real money behind their bar which in turn will encourage them to carry on subscribing?

Would building a single home page for greatpub.co.uk which linked directly to their website within the portal be more beneficial than them just pointing their unused domain? Would search engines class this as a doorway page? Many thanks again.

[peginald]

I would say that it is positive for you, possibly slightly negative for the pub in question BUT they would still probably benefit from having a properly maintained page within a decent web site (yours) than having a crappy, unmaintained web site of their own.

SEOs should remember that the pub in question is trying to get people in through the door to drink beer and hire rooms. Most times that people google a pub, they are just trying to find the address and/or phone number.

I'm speaking as a consumer here - I've often been frustrated with the quality of pub/hotel websites, which seem to have last been touched in 1995. Good luck with your venture - we need it in the UK!

Paul

[CPL]

Thanks Paul

Tried it for the past 7 years with Citypublife and it worked but has limitations - not withstanding I couldn't get it outside of london (long story).

So can I conclude:-

• No harm or negative stuff can happen to the Network by doing this.
• It will help attract more visitors.
• Search engines will not penalise me.
• Doesn't matter if they build a greatpub.co.uk page or just 301 redirect the url greatpub.co.uk - without building a page - to Great Pub Domain in network?
• It would be a good idea to get others to do the same?

[shermanoaksletip]

Nice topic and posts

[Terry Van Horne]

I would say for the bar this is better than any empty parked domain. For years sites have had a domain resolve to a subdomain: http://clientPubs.yoursite.com several blogs are setup like that and in the early years a lot of Realtors sites used the same startegy. Using this method you can also control the navigation of the sub if the owner wishes. It also provides another re\venue stream for your site because there a lot of pubs/bars/restaurants with no presense.