{"id":19061,"date":"2019-06-12T07:30:01","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T06:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/?p=19061"},"modified":"2019-06-24T21:10:46","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T20:10:46","slug":"seo-subscriptions-frenemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/seo-subscriptions-frenemies\/","title":{"rendered":"SEO & Subscriptions: Frenemies?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It\u2019s no secret that many publishers struggle to find a sustainable business model that will help them generate sufficient revenue and stay afloat. Banner ads and clickbait techniques have become a thing of the past, and the financial burden is not getting any lighter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luckily, new monetization opportunities such as native advertising and digital subscriptions have proven to be successful and may hold the key to preserving independent journalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Statistics show that the digital subscription economy is on the rise<\/a>: reputable newspapers such as The New York Times<\/em>, Wall Street Journal<\/em>, Washington Post<\/em>, have managed to hit six figures (and more) in revenue \u2013 solely down to online subscriptions. Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza<\/em> smashed through its digital subscription target hitting 133,000 subscribers<\/a>, while Norway has many local and regional outlets that are performing outstandingly, even with the hard paywall model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first quarter of 2019, The New York Times<\/a><\/em> reached a new milestone<\/a> by gaining more than 3.5 million digital-only subscribers, which lead to a revenue increase to $165.4 million. This indicates two things. Firstly, the subscription model brings new hope to the publishing business, both in terms of nurturing loyal readership and finances. Secondly, readers are showing they want and expect quality. They are getting fed up with fake news, sensationalism, and the \u201ccheap thrill\u201d kind of content, and are willing to pay for trustworthy quality reporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, when it comes to setting up a paywall and ensuring solid visibility on search engine results pages, it\u2019s anything but smooth sailing for publishers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding how Google works<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

According to the comprehensive research conducted by the Media Insight Project<\/a>, while engagement is an essential element for getting people to subscribe, SEO is an important piece of the puzzle in terms of reaching potential subscribers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPublishers must optimize content to be found in search engines. They also must have a robust social strategy\u2014for these casual encounters through social platforms lead to subscribers in bigger numbers than publishers may believe. Having a well-designed and constantly updated website is vital\u2014not just for younger subscribers who form the future of a publication\u2019s base.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A while ago, we discussed the importance of SEO for newsrooms<\/a> and provided optimization tips for publishers. However, when you introduce a paywall, you don\u2019t only disable your site visitors from seeing your content, but you also prevent search engines from indexing it too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As evidenced by the fact that \u2018to Google\u2019 has now become a phrase so ubiquitous as to have gained verb status, it should come as no surprise to find that Google is the most popular search engine with the highest market share (89% according to the latest data<\/a>), which is why most webmasters tend to optimize their sites according to its algorithm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like all search engines, Google relies on crawlers that map out websites and index them, so that when users type in a certain search query, the most relevant results get retrieved and displayed within the results page. Its main goal is to provide the best possible search experience for users; it acts somewhat as a filter of value and relevance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bearing that in mind, Google doesn\u2019t see the point in sending users to a website where the content that matches the query is unreachable, i.e. hidden behind the paywall. This is why some newsrooms struggle with mixed SEO results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google vs. paywalls: a closer look<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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So, if Google is not a fan of paywalls, how come some of the most reputable publishers use them and still<\/em> manage to preserve great visibility in search results?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March 2017, Google released a significant algorithm update called Fred<\/a>. At its core, this update enabled the search engine to filter out websites that were doing a poor job of engaging their visitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fred targeted black-hat SEO tactics that were tied to aggressive monetization and low-quality content. Here, we\u2019re talking about websites that weren\u2019t exactly focused on providing a worthwhile experience to their users, but were instead ad-heavy and thin on content. They were the first in line to get buried beneath more valuable results on SERP (the search engine results page).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say, this update deeply shook the SEO community, especially those webmasters who thought they could get away with bending the rules a bit. But can you really compare spammy websites that don\u2019t offer any value to users with credible news websites and publishers that are trying their best to find a sustainable business model? Well, if you\u2019re a machine such as Google \u2013 you may not be aware that there\u2019s much of a difference between these two things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, people at Google are well aware that ads and subscriptions represent popular ways of monetization, and that the latter might cause some issues SEO-wise if there is no balance between premium and free content. The problem with hard paywalls is that users don\u2019t know what they can expect, i.e. they are not sure of the quality of the hidden content. As Google published on their official blog<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur evaluations have shown that users who are not familiar with the high-quality content behind a paywall often turn to other sites offering free content. It is difficult to justify a subscription if one doesn\u2019t already know how valuable the content is, and in fact, our experiments have shown that a portion of users shies away from subscription sites.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what is the solution here? Well, a small amount of free sampling could do the trick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving from First Click Free policy to Flexible Sampling<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Google is not about discouraging success of quality publishers, especially not news outlets\u2019. On the contrary, one part of its mission is to organize the unthinkably large amount of online information and make it accessible to users who are searching the web.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in the day, Google launched its First Click Free policy in an attempt to standardize publishing practices and enable the search engine to index content located behind the paywall, in order to give the best possible user experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of this policy was that it would require publishers to provide a limited amount of free content to Google Search users in order for the content to get indexed. They were expected to give readers access to a minimum of three free articles per day before hitting them with a paywall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The policy was seen as controversial by many news outlets and publishers, especially as it seemed like an imposed ultimatum: either publishers offer some free content or the engine would push them out of the organic results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This opened up a complex topic regarding who\u2019s who in the cyberspace and how the responsibility of making the World Wide Web accessible and visible is divided. Jason Kint, CEO of a non-profit, Digital Content Next, said<\/a> that tech giants such as Google are using their dominance to define business models for publishers, something he considered to be \u201chighly questionable\u201d. He also thinks that, along with Facebook, Google has \u201cthe ability to create a positive effect on the news and entertainment industry, they have the ability to drive subscription revenues, and to clean out the propaganda or false news\u201d, but in the end it\u2019s entirely up to them how they will use their power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publishers such as Axel Springer and Rupert Murdoch\u2019s News Corp have even described the First Click Free policy as \u201ctoxic\u201d, while others such as Robert Thompson<\/a> saw it as a \u201cfundamental change to the content ecosystem\u201d. As the negative reactions built up, the pressure within the industry got heavier \u2013 all of which lead to Google withdrawing the policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At last, it was now entirely up to publishers to experiment with offering free samples of content to their readership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technical guidelines and best practices regarding paywalls<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Speaking from a technical point of view, paywalls that are not implemented properly are problematic since they serve one type of content to the Googlebot and the other type of content to users \u2013 a black-hat SEO tactic known as cloaking<\/a>. This is frequently used by spammers who over-optimize their content in the attempt to fool crawlers, while \u2018genuine\u2019 users face poor quality content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luckily, the algorithm has advanced enough to recognize most of these cloaking tactics and it now ranks those domains that practice them accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, how can you, as a publisher, avoid getting your paywall interpreted as a form of cloaking? You should definitely have someone with the tech background take a closer look at your website\u2019s markup, check the instructions provided by Google and apply new structured data<\/a> to your publication\u2019s pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the best practices, Google recommends two types of sampling<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n