Membership Site BIG Mistake

[RJC09]

Hey folks!

I am a rather new and inexperienced internet marketer. I run a fishing related website that up until now, has been free and open to everyone.

I made the mistake this past week of restricting half the site to "member's only," not realizing at the time that I was also preventing Google from accessing some of my best posts and pages.

Many of these posts and pages have extensive backlinks pointing to them, and I was ranking very high for some of my top keywords.

Well now my site is buried in the Google rankings. I've gone back and reopened all the posts and pages I had previously put restrictions on-hoping Google would notice and return my site to its previous rankings.

Any ideas if Google will boost me back up to where I used to be, now that I have reopened my posts? If the answer is yes, how long do you think I will have to wait?

Any help is much appreciated! I'm really booting myself in the butt over this one. You live and learn I suppose.

Thanks!

Ryan

[blitz20]

It might take some time, a memebrship area is great to have since if its paid brig you money each month. I would give it a month see if the pages move back up. If not create some links for those pages and see what happens. I think in the long run you will be fine.

[RJC09]

Hi Blitz thank you for the response and the positive encouragement!

[Makis77]

Why dont you create a new subforum with membership only access and keep your old content available so that traffic will continue to flow.

[RJC09]

Hi Makis,

That's exactly what I am doing now, after the mistake.

I have all my old content freely available. New content is restricted for members only.

We'll see how it goes.

Thanks,

Ryan

[Tmill]

You will be blocking a lot of your content off, but this is for the purpose that it becomes paid. Google isn't going to send traffic to somewhere that they can't access.

You should have pages on your site optimized for keywords that get a lot of traffic and then when they get to your site they will see the membership and decide to opt in or not.

Your other option is to open the site again and put adsense on your articles to make you money, but I'm sure you will make more with paid membership

[aygabtu]

Why not have everything accessible, but only members can post/comment, etc. Or have a teaser paragraph or two, and then a notice that only members can see the rest of the article/page? This would give google what they need and may entice more users to register.

[RJC09]

Aygabtu,

I like your idea about adding teaser content, with a notice that only members can access to the rest of the article.

Is there a wordpress plugin that does this? Or do you think I should just link the article to a separate, members only page where the content continues?

[gs000707]

I agree with blitz, my friend had a similar problem and after 2 months, it more or less came back to normal. Not sure, if his case is precisely matching yours, but there was also something with access restriction involved. I'd make such decision before I start the site, it might also offend some members, who don't want to go premium and have supported your online community since its very beginning. I hope your site will get back to its right place after some time.

Best luck with your business!

[yukon]

What I would do is for any new pages you build that will be locked, If it's text (article) create two pages, one page will be free (unlocked) & show the first paragraph (intro) of the page that is locked.

This way You can still SEO the unlocked page & get targeted traffic. Then promote the locked page from the free page.

Best of both worlds, free & locked content at the same time (on two separate pages).

[aygabtu]

Originally Posted by RJC09

Aygabtu,

I like your idea about adding teaser content, with a notice that only members can access to the rest of the article.

Is there a wordpress plugin that does this? Or do you think I should just link the article to a separate, members only page where the content continues?

I'm not a wordpress guy, so I don't know. If I were doing it, a little php code snipit to check credentials would do it easily.

[RJC09]

Thanks a lot folks for all the help-much appreciated.

Take care.

[David-JP]

I like your idea about adding teaser content, with a notice that only members can access to the rest of the article.

Is there a wordpress plugin that does this? Or do you think I should just link the article to a separate, members only page where the content continues?

Most modern membership plugins can handle this including wishlist and amember.

David