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Will having a membership site affect SEO Rankings?

by Justin012
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have decided to turn my website into a membership site, while some of the content on my site is free, a lot of it is visible to paid members only.

I was just wondering, by restricting content for members only, will this affect seo rankings? And if so how can I get around this as some of my best posts are ranking on the first page of google and get tons of traffic.

I am using a plugin called "Paid Membership Pro", which is great. Has anybody else here restricted posts/pages on their website for members only and has it improved conversions?
#affect #membership #rankings #seo #site
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Well anything that you have ranking now and you restrict to members only will no longer be ranking. Pretty simple. If you have to login to see it, Google will not be able to see it.

    There is no way around that.
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    • Profile picture of the author Justin012
      I heard that by using Post Excerpts solves this problem, Am I right?
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by Justin012 View Post

        I heard that by using Post Excerpts solves this problem, Am I right?
        It might help a little, but if you are only showing 150 words or so of a 1,500 page article, you are going to lose some relevancy. Some of your longer tail keywords that are ranking which now are not publicly visible will likely drop.

        Also, the excerpt needs to be shown on the specific page you are trying to rank, not just some category page.

        Even then, you are going to lose search traffic on those pages.

        You also are likely going to lose some internal links, if you have been building good internal links within your content, that Google can no longer see. That will hurt.

        Your home page will likely be fine for whatever it is ranking for. If you are relying on your internal pages to bring in traffic though, that will likely be pretty much wiped out.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Justin012 View Post

        I heard that by using Post Excerpts solves this problem, Am I right?
        Exactly, add teaser content to get traffic interested in the paid content & for on-page SEO.
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        • Profile picture of the author Justin012
          Originally Posted by yukon View Post

          Exactly, add teaser content to get traffic interested in the paid content & for on-page SEO.
          How do you do that? If I had only 100 words, can I still rank in the search engines?
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          • Profile picture of the author yukon
            Banned
            Originally Posted by Justin012 View Post

            How do you do that? If I had only 100 words, can I still rank in the search engines?

            The SEO doesn't really change.

            Decide which of your keywords per each page has the best traffic/conversions & optimize that 100 words or however many for the keywords you're targeting.

            Keep in mind you can also incorporate your keywords (per each page) into custom sales copy (per each page) which will allow you to target additional keywords without looking spammy. Example, include images in your content with alt-text or plain text image captions. Add sales copy bullet list with keywords, etc...

            Content doesn't only have to be an article/snippet.
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          • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
            Originally Posted by Justin012 View Post

            How do you do that? If I had only 100 words, can I still rank in the search engines?
            Yes. Couple of sites I often end up googling have this kind of setup. If my search is specific enough I'm getting the exact article even though there's just the title and a short snippet of text. Seems to work for them, and also serves their users who've already bought the product.

            I'm also running a membership site, but we don't have this particular problem. We've got the paid content in video format. Paid Membership Pro is a nice plugin.
            Signature
            Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
            Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

            What's your excuse?
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  • Profile picture of the author danparks
    Originally Posted by Justin012 View Post

    I was just wondering, by restricting content for members only, will this affect seo rankings? And if so how can I get around this as some of my best posts are ranking on the first page of google and get tons of traffic.
    I wouldn't give up ranking, traffic-creating posts for any reason! Getting visitors to pay for content first requires getting visitors, and you've achieved that difficult step.

    Leave the existing articles alone. Create new, great content for members.

    Leaving the existing, ranking, good content available for free will entice visitors to sign up for a membership ("if this is what's free, I can only imagine how good the paid-for content is!"). Giving away something is a standard way of getting visitors to pay for content, so just consider your existing free content as promotional material.
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    • Profile picture of the author Justin012
      Thanks Dan. Now that I think about it, I actually agree with you! So, I have decided to keep most of my best content made unprotected and FREE for all visitors. But there's a bit of a downside, It just means that I'll need to create more and even greater content for the members area. All I got in the members area at the moment is a workout and nutritional program, printable workout pdfs, ect. I'm getting a pretty decent amount of google and social media traffic so hoping that I'll get a few sign ups soon.
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  • Profile picture of the author tahoecale
    If you kept all of the content already post free for everyone to read and then created more HQ Content for your paid members as well as extra features that you should be fine. Just remember to keep trying to optimize the public content to get some traffic that will convert into a paid member.
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  • Profile picture of the author Justin012
    Hi nettiapina, thanks for your input.

    I have lots of good content that is ranking very high on the first page of google, most of these articles are between 700-1000 words long. I'm just afraid to to take a risk restricting them for members only and worried that they will lose it's ranking from google.

    How do you do this? do you use exerpt or teasers? I just want to restrict my best content for paid members only using paid membership pro and I feel that if i can maintain my current rankings, I would get a good few people signing up to become member.

    What steps do you think I should take here? anyone?
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