Oh boy, so what we’re seeing here are known as "doorway pages" — and as many have already pointed out — they are a big no-no when it comes to SEO.
The unfortunate reality is that there are still SEO providers (in all verticals) who use these kind of tactics. Clearly they’re meant to try to trick Google’s algorithm as opposed to offer real value to real people.
Every so often we take on a new SEO client who had a previous provider implement doorway pages on their DI website. When we discover their existence, we do a few things — (aside from scream in frustration 
)
- We call the dealer to explain what we found, why it’s bad and why it’s important to remedy the situation before moving on to further SEO efforts.
- We perform an indexation and traffic audit of the doorway pages to see how much (if any) traffic they're bringing to the site and the value of that traffic.
- We provide customized recommendations about taking down the bloat pages, implementing redirects, and fully re-writing any of the pages that were bringing in decent traffic and that make sense for the dealer to be custom and actually useful to users.
I’m not going to lie, it's a MASSIVE undertaking, and even though it wasn’t our doing, we make it our responsibility to get it cleaned up for these clients so we can have a clean, solid foundation moving forward.
Believe it or not, there are SEO providers in this space who do work tirelessly to bring real value to their clients. That’s what we do at DI and I’d be happy to jump on a call with anyone — vendor, consultant or dealer — to explain what makes us different. Not to sell you something, but to give you hope that there is indeed at least one straight up partner in the automotive SEO realm.
Hope that helps I’m always down to talk SEO, so feel free to shoot me a message if you want to get nerdy with it. Thanks!
