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Gated Content

Last updated: Aug 25, 2023

https://cmlabs.co/en-ae/seo-terms/gated-content

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What is Gated Content?

Gated content is content that can only be accessed if the user performs certain actions. If you have ever visited a website and were asked to register before accessing its content, that is an example of such content that is meant to be gatekept.

In most cases, users will need to provide their contact details as well as some personal information. In addition, users may be asked to answer a number of additional questions, such as the name of the office or institution, position, or even job description in the company.

This type of content tends to be informative, similar to premium content. In general, this type of content can be accessed free of charge by users. It's just that users are asked to register or fill out a form with some information.

Once you get the content, the marketing team from the website will send newsletters, email campaigns, and even communicate directly with users via email.

This type of content generally takes the form of scientific journals, ebooks, videos, sheet templates, and others with an informative intent.

Pros and Cons of Gated Content

Check out the positives and negatives of content that is not provided for free below:

Pros:

Able to get new leads more easily
Generate business profits practically
Get more insight about users or potential customers

Kons:

Users who want to access content are limited because they must first register or fill out a series of forms before they can do so.
Can not be optimized from an SEO perspective
Does not bring in pageviews or website traffic

Is There SEO Value in Gated Content?

As previously mentioned, one of the drawbacks of this type of content is that it can not be optimized from an SEO perspective. Therefore, it can be concluded that this type of content does not contain SEO value. Why is that?

In general, this type of content has the main goal of getting new leads. This is one of the reasons why such content doesn’t attract high traffic. In addition, this type of content can not be found easily by users because search engines do not crawl it.

Most of this type of content is in the form of documents such as pdfs, slides, or videos. Therefore, this type of content can not be optimized for SEO, like free-access articles in general. This type of content can not be optimized by setting keywords, such as “free access articles.”

Even so, this maintained content can keep the content "exclusive," so that it will minimize the risk of duplication by other parties. In addition, the marketing team will get quality leads with criteria that match the company's marketing targets.