A search engine looks for a focus on your web site. But if you try to cram dozens of key words wherever you can across your web pages, you have no focus. What you end up with is an unintelligible mess, and lousy search engine results.

This lack of focus creates web pages with confusing lines like: "Milwaukee, Shorewood, Milwaukee County, East Side, Whitefish Bay, North Shore, Wisconsin, Milwaukee WI, Lakefront homes, Lake Michigan, real estate, homes, land, properties, condominiums, duplexes, and more from the top broker, real estate agent, buyer's agent, Realtor, CRS, GRI, in Southeast Wisconsin!"

Aren't you tired of seeing this kind of stuff all over the web? I know I am. I'll bet your visitors are, too.

The most popular "solution" is to create a series of different pages buried within your web site, each with a different key word focus. You then submit each of these pages to the search engines. In the industry these pages are commonly called "bridge", "gateway", or "doorway" pages, but at my company we call them, more accurately I think, "backdoor" pages. Some people are successful with this. But you'll have to create a different page for each key word focus, AND for each search engine -- because they all look for something different. That could easily add up to dozens, even hundreds, of these backdoor pages.

A hundred backdoor pages? I'm not exaggerating. Say you have four names of towns you want to do well in, for only 5 of the top search engines, such as "Phoenix", "Paradise Valley", "Carefree", and "Scottsdale". That's 20 backdoor web pages, which is plenty already. But don't forget about these words: "homes", "real estate", and "properties". All of a sudden you need 60 backdoor pages. Oops, we forgot about "Arizona". Now you are up to 120 pages. And what about "AZ"? 180 pages. Just to make your head swim, did you know that some search engines distinguish between upper and lower case words? This makes "phoenix" a different key word than "Phoenix", for example. So, how many backdoor pages does that make now? Too many.

And what happens when search engines change what they are looking for -- and whatever success you are enjoying with your backdoor pages vanishes? You or someone has to go through a complicated process of testing new strategies. It can take a long time. In the meantime the search engines can change again! It can be maddening. More than one company in this industry estimates that it would take someone about 30 hours every week to do all this work - for one web site.

But is it worth it? After all is said and done, do backdoor pages make sense?

Over a year ago I predicted to our clients that it would get harder and harder to make these backdoor pages successful. It's only logical: Search engines don't want people manipulating their systems. Give them time and they'll put up roadblocks to stop the manipulators, including backdoor manipulators. This prediction is becoming true. It is reported that Alta Vista, for example, now rejects about 25% of all submissions. One of Alta Vista's more recently established reasons for giving web sites the boot is having these backdoor pages. Lots of people with lots of backdoor pages got stung very badly by this. Now they are scrambling. Was it worth it?

On top of all this, there is a strong trend developing among search engines to look at your web site as a whole, not as a series of pages. Some won't even accept submissions of individual pages within your web site: "www.yourwebsite.com" = acceptable; "www.yourwebsite.com/pagename.html" = not acceptable. Where does that leave backdoor pages? Yes there are tricks to get these pages indexed, like "invisible" links, but how long before search engines catch on to these tricks? It's like building your web site on a trap door. Sooner or later you are going down.

Another solution is to have multiple web sites, each with a different focus. I like this approach, and my company has created streamlined ways to make this possible for our clients. Instead of having one web site that tries to be everything to everyone, you have a series of web sites, each with a different focus. And there are ways of doing this that are legitimate, make sense to search engines, and make sense to your visitors, too. Of course, you can only build so many web sites, just as you can only build so many backdoor pages. With search engines, nothing is perfect.

If all of this is making your head swim, you could hire a search engine positioning company, and let them worry about it. These type of companies have sprung up like weeds all across the web. I'll talk a little more about search engine positioning companies in a future myth. In the meantime, just be careful. The web makes it easy for anyone to put up a web site, or send you an email, and make all kinds of impressive claims. Get references. Do your homework. And be prepared to open your wallet.