With more and more publishers adopting a paywall due to the decline in print circulation and revenue, media brands are looking to subscription models for the future of digital news and journalism. But how do paywalls impact SEO? Learn the technical SEO best practices when it comes to integrating a paywall. Avoid the most common mistakes as they are revealed and get strategic insight into how Independent.ie went from 0 to 35k paying subscribers in a year. And think more than content when it comes to your paywall SEO strategy.

1. Paywall SEO: Digital
First Print Second, From
0 to 35k subscribers in a
year
Dan Smullen | Mediahuis Ireland
https://www.slideshare.net/danrsmullen/
@Dansmull

2. Why Paywalls?

3. 1. Newspaper Circulation
2020
2000
● UK national newspaper sales have fallen by nearly two-thirds over the last two decades

4. 2. Newspaper Ad Revenue
● Western European newspaper revenues have fallen by more than a third from 2003 to 2019. Source: Western Europe
News Media Landscape Trends

5. 3. The Rise in Ad Blockers
1. The Rise in Ad Blockers
Ad-blocker users In the United States
alone, has grown from 15% in 2014 to
almost 27% in 2020.
Source: Statista.com

6. What if people won’t pay?

7. The #1 Reason people do not pay for news is because it is free!
Source: Reuters Institute Digital News Report

8. People have always paid for quality journalism
“Think about it. We’re bakers and
we make croissants, and if you
come to one door, our print door,
you pay for the croissants”
“But if you come to the back door,
the digital door, we give them away
for free.”
And in Feb 2020 this enticing yet
unsustainable bakery deal is over.
“From now on, also at the back
door, we’ll ask the 2½ euro a week
for the croissants there.”

9. “Digital First Print Second”
Print editions of dozens of
regional newspapers to
finish, with sweeping job
cuts feared
From 0 to 30k+ subscribers

10. Digital news subscriptions is the future of journalism.

11. What impact does a
paywall have on
search?

12. 2 in every 5 visitors to Independent.ie comes from earned media such as search or social.

13. Independent.ie tested a regwall and found no significant impact on traffic.
● Before introducing our paywall,
we implemented a registration
wall.
● The regwall was tested on two
completely temporary replicas
of our sites for Canada
(independent.ie/ca/) and
Australia (independent.ie/au/).
● For users in those countries,
we put all content behind a
registration wall.
● We observed no significant
drop in traffic (~5%) with a
significant increase in new
subscriptions.

14. “You can’t just switch a paywall on and just think you’re
done”
TheSun.co.uk Paywall SEO failure ● In 2013, the Sun.co.uk introduced a
paywall.
● In 2015, the paywall was scrapped.
● In 2016, technical SEO with Barry Adams
commenced.
● 2017 visibility greater than before the
paywall disaster.
Source: Sistrix.com

15. Technical SEO and Google’s Guidelines Matter
The Times UK traffic impact of implementing flexible sampling.
● The Times UK’s audience development
team wrote on medium that prior to
adhering to the paywall SEO guidelines
the Times UK were “virtually non-
existent in it’s search engine results
pages”.
● When they implemented the flexible
sampling structured data in 2018, they
doubled their page visits in comparison to
2017.

16. What are the technical SEO
requirements of a paywall?

17. 1. Google must be able to crawl paywalled content

18. 2. Structured Data must be used
● Paywall structured data must be used to differentiate paywalled content from the practice of cloaking.

19. 3. Paywalled content must use markup (Hardwall
only)
1. A class name using for the cssSelector property needs to be around each
paywalled section of the page. (.class selector only)
2. NewsArticle structured data must be used for AMP and non-AMP.
3. The cssSelector must reference the class name in the NewsArticle
structured data.
HTML Structured data
Tip
The no archive robots meta tag can be used on all
paywall articles to prevent Google’s cache from
storing paywalled content to prevent users
bypassing the paywall.

20. You don’t need to market to bots!

21. “For Paywalled Content, Google allows you to “legitimately” cloak
googlebot”
What we see What Googlebot sees
“Paywall structured data markup
doesn’t need to be visible to users,
but it does need to be visible to
web crawlers”
Google’s John Mueller
Source: Search Engine Journal

22. And not just Google, Facebook also wants you to cloak them!
Tip
“Whitelist Facebook’s
user agent. This will allow
Facebook to access the
content.”

23. What are the different
paywall models?

24. Paywall Models
Key
Currency used to unlock access
1. Data and consent (e-mail
registration wall)
2. Time (ad walls)
3. Effort (survey walls)
4. Money (paywall)
Barrier
Customer segmentation tools
1. Brand awareness and attitude
(hardwall, subscriber only)
2. Interest (freemium models)
3. Behaviours (metered, time,
dynamic walls)
4. Hybrid (mix of the above)
Benefits
Value proposition traded for currency
1. Content (news, non-news,
owned, aggregated)
2. Features and tools (apps,
puzzles, comments)
3. Experiences (less or no ads)
4. Non-content (gifts, events,
competitions, tools)

25. What paywall model works
for SEO?

26. Freemium Model 1: Metering/Dynamic (Cookie Based)
Cookie based metering has been used by some of the most successful news subscription providers such as the
NYtimes.com, Boston Globe, and Wired.
For SEO, this model is perfect for SEO as google does not store cookies, and all content for Googlebot is free. In
Googlebots eyes it’s almost as if there is no paywall.

27. Freemium model 2: Lead In (Javascript Based)
The lead in method is where a publisher offers a portion of an articles content without it being shown in full.
There are several methods of implementing this, shown above is where you hide the content using Javascript for logged
out users, whereby the content is still in the HTML.
The downside of this method is that the content is available for bots/scrapers.

28. Freemium Model 3: Free Content and Hardwall (Server based)
● The lead in hardwall freemium model blends a mix of free and paid content.
● Users are only shown the paywall.
● Only the real googlebot is allowed in.
Free Content Paid for Content with Fake Googlebot Paid for Content with Real Googlebot

29. Hardwall model 1: Lead In with content in structured data for Googlebot only.
If a user is logged in, content is returned. Logged out users will only see a few paragraphs of content.
For Googlebot, the lead in hardwall uses flexible sampling where by it has it’s content in the structured data.

30. Hardwall model 2: Content only visible to Googlebot and logged in users
All Content is hidden to logged out users Not if you are the real Googlebot

31. What paywall model does
not work for SEO?

32. 1. Treating Googlebot the same as logged out users

33. 2. Redirecting and forcing Googlebot to log in from the indexable URL

34. 3. Not using paywalled structured data

35. “If the content is not visible
to search engines, they can’t
crawl, index and your
paywalled content won’t
rank well.”

36. “What’s good for SEO might not be as good for conversion”
Harder paywalls are better for conversion, but harder to build an audience. Ensuring a paywall is search engine friendly is imperative for
search traffic.
Paywall Type SEO Traffic Conversion
Metered Good Good Okay
Hardwall Bad Bad Good
Google Friendly Hardwall Good Bad Good
Freemium with lead in Okay Bad Good
Google Friendly Freemium lead
in
Good Okay Good

37. Paywall SEO Strategy

38. Reminder: “You can’t just switch a paywall on and just think
you’re done”
TheSun.co.uk Paywall SEO failure ● In 2013, the Sun.co.uk introduced a
paywall.
● In 2015, the paywall was scrapped

39. If you want subscribers, say goodbye to clickbait
Quality journalism goes hand in hand with a successful
subscription model.
Independent.ie exposed a politician for feeding the
compensation culture instead of defending it. As a result
it got the country talking.
That same politicians name was the 5th most searched
person in 2019
https://trends.google.com/trends/yis/2019/IE/

40. “You need to go beyond the headlines and offer quality
content”
Key Insight: Going beyond the headlines”
and offering quality exclusive and unique
insight drove the highest amount of new
subscribers.

41. Subscribers may only be as small as 9% of your audience

42. So, don’t count on them for search traffic!
When paid for content was launched with Independent.ie the homepage layout was changed to reflect this.
From testing, we found people were most likely to pay for analysis and less for showbiz/entertainment.
But for SEO, there was a reduction of 72% of articles being referred from the homepage.
All content sections removed from the homepage lost +50% of position 1 rankings.

43. The structure of a news sites homepage matters for SEO
● The homepage has the most external and
internal page rank. By removing pages
from the homepage, this was a clear cut
signal to Google and other search engines
that these pages/articles were less
important. For news SEO article Inlinks
matter.

44. Increased total referring articles from the homepage

45. Impact: Clicks From Search Trending Upwards
The decline of clicks from
search since the homepage
layout change in Febuary
2020 shows a positive
average increase of 11% for
December/Jan when
compared to
October/November of 2020.

46. “Paywall may work for News SEO but try not to kill your evergreen content with a paywall”
Google may be using lower CTRs, increased
bounce-backs to search, and lower dwell times for
evergreen content to identify user satisfaction
issues.

47. Instead understand and include customer segmentation in your
content strategy.

48. Think about how search can help your conversion funnel
Key Point: The conversion funnel is not linear. People may start with a search, but loyalty can be fostered through a newsletter
strategy

49. Would you buy before you try?

50. “Think more than content with your paywall SEO strategy”
Puzzles Tools Recipes Podcasts/Video

51. About Me:
DanSmullen.com
@dansmull

52. Publishing
52

53. Non-Publishing
53

54. Thank you.``