Whats the best way to move 30% of our content behind a paywall and still get indexed without penalties and without letting people see our content before they subscribe.

[Adrian-phipps]

Hi all - We want to create a membership program so that they can get more great stuff from us and offers, deals, etc. but only if they qualify to be a member via a purchase for example. The question is we want to move only some of our content (c.30%) behind the membership curtain - will be a mix of SEO value content. There are few questions/ concerns I am hoping you the SEO community can help me with:

1. How can i ensure Google continues to index it without getting penalized.

2. If i tell google bot to index but not allow Google and other sites to see the membership content will that create a penalty? Is that considered a form of cloaking?

3. How can i prevent having to reveal 3 pages a day under Google's First Click Free set-up.

I suppose i want my cake and eat it and i suspect the answer is well  i cant. Any help or insights that can help me make this decision better is gratefully accepted.

[Tenlo]

You can't.  Either your content is reader accessible to everyone including the Google Bot or you gate your content and you won't be able to rank for it.  Google is all about the free share of ideas and information, they specifically make sure that content is view able by a user when they are sent to a site, the idea of Google serving people to a pay gate is against everything they have put said.

Your other option would be to make good basic content that answer the questions people are searching for and then offer them more, in depth information if they register, but doing this you will only rank for your open content, not your gated pieces.