Do you think that Content Locking (force to share to unlock content) is manipulative and will eventually be penalised by Google?
-
There is a tactic called content locking which requires a user to share a post or homepage URL in order to unlock content (either a video, a full post or downloadable ebook).
Do you think this is manipulating signals to increase search rankings?
Argument Against Using Content Locking
Social signals and links from Google Plus shares clearly correlate to increased search engine visibility.
Requiring a user to pay for content with social sharing is only used to improve search rankings.
According to the webmaster guidelines:
"Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you, or to a Google employee. Another useful test is to ask, 'Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?'"
Argument For Using Content Locker
Users tend to value their social profiles and won't share something unless they believe it is valuable. Requiring a share is just a push to motivate them to share something they value.
Additionally, it is similar to an email opt-in in that the publisher now has a social media lead they can follow up on.
It's not just about SEO, it's about tapping into social network traffic and engagement on social networks.
-
Right!
And there can be secondary effects. If you are running surveys and people bounce back into the SERPs instead of answering the question, could that result in a ranking reduction because of poor engagement? I have been running surveys and am cautiously watching my engagement and rankings.
-
Because Google has never broken its own guidelines and then penalized its own pages before.... http://searchengineland.com/google-penalizes-google-japan-16541
http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pagerank-reduced-due-to-sponsored-posts-106551 -
You may find it does the opposite of what you intend if your visitors don't use social media - they'll feel left out of the party and nobody likes that! There are many many reasons why someone would choose not to be on social media, and forcing them to have an account just to read an article is never going to work - they'll just leave and find the content elsewhere on the web.
Check analytics to see how socially engaged your visitors are. If they are, then I'd test it as a tactic - it may not work for long though, because it's the sort of thing Google doesn't like ('Don't do as I do, do as I say!!!!')
I bet Mr Cutts is thinking of a way to thwart your plan as I type this
Good luck whatever you do, and please let us know what the outcome is!
Amelia
-
This isn't an answer. Just sayin' something that one google project is doing.
If you are familiar with Google Consumer Surveys, people who arrive at a page of content are asked to do a small task in exchange for unlocking the content. They are normally given a choice of two tasks: A) answer one or two multiple choice questions, or, B) share the content.
So, if Google is going to be slappin' people for the share, they will be slappin' their own project along with its publishers.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How To SEO Sinhala Teledramas Keyword In Google
How To SEO Sinhala Teledramas Keyword In Google. My Web Sites are both old, and I have Paying More Money To increase SEO My web site, But Google Not Showing My web site and rank, I need A SEO Adviser. Our Website is Videos category; Please Give me a solution to fix my web site. This is Link Sinhala Teledramas
Social Media | | ipl7440 -
Do we expect Google+ to continue being an important ranking signal after its recent changes?
I've noticed that Google Plus seems to have a larger influence on ranking than other social networks, especially for one of our competitors. We haven't started using Google Plus, and I'm wondering if, from an SEO standpoint, it's worth putting energy into after last month's changes. TL;DR: After last month's changes, is Google Plus still an important ranking signal?
Social Media | | 4RS_John1 -
Facebook Share Metrics
Is there a method, program, or app to view how many Facebook shares each page/content has on a website. Is there a plugin if the site is a wordpress blog? I'm looking to see how many shares or top shared content are on a specific website. Thanks!
Social Media | | MasonInteractive0 -
Many authors a google profile - possible?
We have a news portal
Social Media | | meteorr
We have our https://plus.google.com/ our company profile /
Articles written our journalists It is possible, that they referred to our https://plus.google.com/our company profile / (so as not to each author to your account.) ? example: This article was written on the page: URL ....
The author Natasha Penrova The author [Andrey Dembitskiy on the page with the author: http://site.com/profile/natasha/](http://site.com/profile/Dembitskiy/) <a rel="me" <="" span="">href="https://plus.google.kom / our company profile /">+Natasha Penrova on the page with the author: http://site.com/profile/Dembitskiy/</a> <a rel="me" <="" span=""> href="https://plus.google.kom / our company profile /">+Andrey Dembitskiy So will it work?</a>0 -
Do facebook shares of deep links help the whole domain rank better?
What i mean by this is if we were to obtain 10-20 facebook shares for 10 different deep links like these: http://domain.com/deep-page/page-one
Social Media | | adriandg
http://domain.com/deep-page/page-two
http://domain.com/deep-page/page-three
http://domain.com/deep-page/page-four
... Would that help any of these rank better:
http://domain.com
http://domain.com/product1
http://domain.com/product2
etc... Extrapolating, does the same count for Twitter, Google+, etc?0 -
Is there a way on OSE or any other site to find the 50 most socially shared URLs on a given domain?
I'd love to see which URLs on a specific domain get socially shared the most. I know I can use OSE to say figure out exactly how much social sharing has happened on let's say this URL:
Social Media | | Almonds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama But what if I want to figure out the top 50 most shared URLs across all of wikipedia.org. Is that possible on OSE or anywhere else? If not, do you have some ideas on how something similar could be achieved?0 -
Can facebook comments be crawl by google using the open grap API?
If yes what is the trick because we can't figure it out. (no black hat techniques please) Thanks
Social Media | | OlivierChateau0