Anyone who has done SEO for a while has heard of it The Myth of Google’s 200+ Ranking Factors.
To be fair, the number 200 was probably somewhat accurate when former Googler Matt Cutts first mentioned the number more than a decade ago.
A lot has changed since then, and it’s unlikely anyone now knows the true number of ranking factors included in Google’s algorithm.
That said, not all ranking factors are created equally.
if you just focus on The first eight factors the most influential, you will make it. These factors include:
- High-quality content.
- Mobile first.
- page experience.
- page speed.
- Page optimization.
- Internal links.
- external link.
- Local.
The thing is: this only works if your content is visible to Google and available to readers.
What if you put a paywall in front of your content, creating an extra step? Let’s take a look at how to do SEO for membership websites in 2022.
Why put your content behind a paywall?
The obvious question is— Why put your content behind a paywall If it affects SEO in the first place?
The disadvantages are obvious:
- If search engines can’t see your content, very few people will.
- You need to make them worth going through that door.
- Some people may give you false information just to view your closed content.
That said, it has some benefits:
- You’re likely to get better quality leads because people who are willing to give you their personal information are more likely to have a higher level of interest.
- It can help you better segment and target your audience.
- Audiences often see your content as more valuable, useful, and trustworthy (but you have to deliver).
What does Google think about paid content?
Whether your content is free or paid, you must follow Google’s Guidelines.
The biggest question for premium content owners is how their content will be visible in search if it’s not freely available to all users.
To mitigate this, Google initially introduced a Free First Click (FCF) policy.
This means that, in addition to their premium content, publishers must also offer some free content that users can access via Google searches.
Arguably the publisher wasn’t the biggest fan of the model, it discontinued production in 2017 and replaced it with “Flexible sampling. “
Basically, the newer model gives publishers more wiggle room to decide how much content they want to make available to users for free and how they want to make it available.
Publishers can choose from three options in flexible sampling.
freemium
Using the freemium model, some articles o
n The site can be accessed without a paywall, and some will have a paywall.
In other words, this is a combination of gated and non-gated content.
There are no specific rules about what content is free and what is paid, but generally publishers use popular free content to take advantage of paid content and entice people to subscribe when they want to read, perhaps a more in-depth article .
metered
With metered paywalls, visitors can read a limited number of articles per month before being asked to subscribe. Typically, this is three articles, but it can be five or just one.
Several well-known sites have used this approach, including Medium, The New York Times, and more.
Once the limit is reached, you will see a prompt to subscribe like this:
hard paywall
The first two methods are called “soft” paywalls because they allow visitors to see at least a few articles, or even just parts of the content.
With a “hard” paywall, everything is turned off.
This means that the content cannot be crawled or indexed by Google or other search engines. Obviously, this makes it harder to get new registrations, but if the content is of high value, the conversion rate is much higher.
Although probably the least popular of all paywall methods, hard paywalls are still used by some of the top sites in finance and other industries, such as the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and more.
Screenshot by author, February 2022So which of these three is the best option?
A lot depends on the purpose of your content.
News platforms such as The New York Times have had great success measuring content. This model entices users to subscribe by providing full samples as “trailers,” giving visitors a good idea of the quality of their content.
For example, the New York Times introduced metered subscriptions back in 2011, and today, a decade or so later, 7.6 million out of 8.4 Millions of subscribers are digital, while only about 795,000 are print subscribers.
Below is a graph of their digital subscription growth from 2011 to 2021:
Screenshot by author, February 2022A freemium approach makes sense for sites that already have large and loyal readerships, different kinds of content, and exclusive content.
Balance free and premium content
Due to its sheer volume, free content has a distinct advantage over premium content in organic search. This does not mean that there will be no organic search opportunities for premium content publishers.
In fact, one could argue that participating in SEO is more important for subscription sites because they have an additional hurdle (paywall) to clear.
Premium content publishers actually have two great options:
- They can strike a balance between free and premium content like The New York Times.
- Or they can create content that readers are searching for but can’t find anywhere else. This content needs to be exclusive in nature.
In other words, no content of any kind can be put behind a paywall.
Basic articles such as “How to optimize your website for SEO“Thousands (millions?) of numbers on the web that can be found with a quick Google search for free. There is no reason or incentive for users to pay for this kind of content.
On the other hand, if publishers put a lot of effort into uncovering needs and then creating solutions in the form of white papers, ebooks, or in-depth articles, they can justify putting their professional content behind a paywall.
It’s even better if the content is written by well-known experts.
When deciding whether to restrict content, it may be a good idea to consider the following three questions.
1. What is “End Game”?
Are you looking to increase subscribers or generate leads? If so, then the content should probably be gated in some way.
However, if you want to generate more visitors and links, the gating method will backfire.
2. Is the content worth paying for?
Put yourself in the user’s shoes and answer the question: “Is this content worth enough to pay or fill out a form?”
Be careful when answering this question. As a creator or curator of content, pride in authorship can make it hard to be truly impartial.
3. Is the data collected worth it?
Another consideration for content gating is how it affects the user experience. The increased use of pop-ups and overlays has led directly to an increase in ad-blocking software.
By forcing users to hand over personal information to access closed content, a (sometimes large) percentage of the data collected consists of pseudonymous and burner email accounts.
‘Fred’ update and the difference between premium and gated content
In March 2017, Google rolled out an algorithm update called Fred.
The basic idea is to reward sites that provide a positive user experience and downgrade sites to light-quality content and advertising-heavy sites.
Fred also inadvertently downgraded some legitimate paywall sites.
Technical SEO Considerations for Paywall Content
One of the problems Fred had initially was that it had difficulty distinguishing paid content from hidden (hidden) content. Since then, Google has come up with a solution: structured data.
In order for paid content to be eligible to appear in Google search results, it needs to follow Structural and Technical Guidelines.
The following examples illustrate how to indicate paid content to comply with Google’s guidelines:
Screenshot by author, February 2022The question is, “How is Googlebot able to read what’s behind the paywall?” For example, if you look at This article Using View Source, you can see the following from your browser:
Screenshot by author, February 2022The rest is behind a paywall…
the answer is……
i.e. the website itself need Use camouflage.
When Googlebot requests a page, it sends the full content using the User-Agent HTTP header, for example:
Screenshot by author, February 2022Last but not least: Smart searchers have learned that paywalls can be bypassed by going into Google’s cache and reading content for free.
To prevent this, one needs to use No Archive Robots Meta Tagwhich will prevent Google from showing cached links to this page.
in conclusion
Paywalls are becoming more common on the web. They allow publishers to generate revenue by charging readers for access to articles or other content.
While they can be used to provide premium content, they also limit free access to information. And, they can restrict search bots from accessing what they need to know to properly catalog your site.
We hope these tips helped you decide whether to use a paywall or how to best optimize your paywall for search and monetization success.
More resources:
Featured Image: Marija_Crow/Shutterstock
