Protected content and SEO

On my site I have articles that must be available for paying subscribers only.
What I do is that after the introduction to the real content of the article I place the “more” tag. So everybody can see this introduction but they have to pay for a subscription to continue reading. Paying subscribers can continue reading without problem.

What I am wondering about is the SEO aspect for my site.
Is the protected content available for the searchengines or do I have to do other things to make them crawl the site and find content for indexing.

Strange question: what do you want to index ? Not the hidden content I suppose. What is hidden will not be indexed – God thanks ! Only the public stuff is visible to the bots.

Hmm, maybe strange, maybe not.
I installed the SEO ultimate plugin and I do give the Meta Description there.
One thing I know about the search engines is that relevance is VERY important to them.
What I also know is that in the SERPs only the Meta Description is shown.
My assumption is that they will look at the subject of the site. Then the title of the page and meta description and then to the content of the site. If there is a certain consistency that would mean that the ranking is influenced in a positive way.
If the protected content IS indeed invisible to the search engines then they can never determine the relevance.
So, if such is the case then my question is, how do you people deal with that.

Well, you can hide only a part of your content. But it’s impossible to get the content indexed AND hidden to non members. Google looks for content what is visible to the public. I don’t think you will like to use a search engine giving you links to pages you cannot read…

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by  Jean-Michel MEYER.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by  Jean-Michel MEYER.

Fair enough… So what would be a solution then?

I have a similar “problem” with my campus: most content is behind membership wall, so if someone is searching for something that I HAVE, they wont find it. I found a way around it and am getting someone to help me set it up. This might or might not be suitable for you.

– i am creating various pages (in my case, it will be one page per tutorial) that are totally hidden from navigation
– those pages are keyword rich, for SEO purpose but also a “selling pitch” for my product
– those pages will be linked together and with related tutorials “hidden pages”, but all will direct viewers to the real sale pitch page

This setup allows me to take advantage of SEO, and search engine ranking without giving the actual content away (i am just trying to convice you that i HAVE the content and that you WANT it!)

Here is one example of such pages: Postage Stamp

Like i said, it might not be the answer for your particular site though, but maybe something you can tweak.

I agree with Cassel. You have to create content linking to protected pages. I think there is no other solution related to seach engines – I’m not sure you understood the philosophy about search engines :-)

Cassel’s approach is good. And you can also have different content in the same page using a conditional, where the one displayed to visitors would be SEO optimized without giving away the paid content.

beside … I am wondering if the SOE plugin will not take the ‘hidden” part and republish it into the rss, up to the limit given to feedburner ….

OK Cassel, I will take your advice and see what happens. Thanks for these ideas.

Good luck. I dont know anything about your site, or your content so i cannot guarantee it will work (not even sure it will work for me as i am still just starting, but i am hopeful).