Have you ever subscribed to any newsletter or YouTube channel?

Such subscriptions offer gated content. To see its overview, you can simply try a free subscription and see the news or articles landing in your inbox. This is gated content. Let’s explain it further.

Gated Content: An Introduction

Gated content refers to digital content. Unlike easy-to-access online content, blogs, or articles, this type of content can be accessed typically through a registration or subscription form. It means that users have to show their willingness to read by filling out a form. So, this approach is mostly valuable for businesses that are likely to capture serious users as leads and build their contact lists. For this purpose, they rely on gated content, which can be an ebook, whitepaper, research report, webinar, and premium articles. Overall, a subscription is a must, which eventually enriches the contact list for the business by offering valuable digital content.

This strategy offers significant advantages, which are given below:

Benefits of Gated Content

Let’s interact with some key benefits of offering gated content.

Lead Generation

The very first advantage is to collect data, which can be leads or contact lists. Businesses are interested in intended users. Those who subscribe to or register with their names, email addresses, and company details, show that they are interested. Some smart marketers use this data for targeted marketing and fostering leads.

In this context, HubSpot studied and discovered that gated content is able to overwhelm conversion rates by up to 50% as compared to non-gated content.

Qualified Leads

As aforementioned, registered users are often more likely to invest. So, they are considered high-quality leads that are likely to convert into consumers. It benefits businesses in segmenting their customers on the basis of the information provided. Accordingly, these businesses personalize effective marketing strategies.

Perceived Value

Gated content is categorized as high-value information or insights. It overwhelms the perceived value of the content. If offerings meet customers’s needs and inspire them to buy, it is considered the perceived value. Factors like convenience, affordability, aesthetics, and cutting-edge design can be reasons for enhanced perceived value. It establishes the business as a thought leader in the industry.

In essence, high-quality content has the hook factor. It also means that users who are genuinely interested in the subject matter are more likely to engage and interact with the business.

Impact of Gated Content on SEO

SEO, Indexing, and Visibility Challenges

Gated content is typically not offered to all. It is typically reserved for highly intended users. So, this type of content is secured behind a form or paywall, which hampers its indexing in search engines. This means that the content won’t be able to contribute to enhancing its online visibility. It is the ultimate goal of content marketing.

Furthermore, users have to share their personal details, like their email ID, to access the content. So, it is less likely to be linked or shared further on other websites. For sure, it won’t be helpful in enhancing backlink profiles and SEO.

That’s why 50% of SEO professionals report that this type of content can restrict organic search visibility due to indexing and accessibility issues.

Balancing Gated and Ungated Content

To overcome the negative impact of lacking visibility, SEO experts or marketers wisely establish the balance between gated and freely available content. Ungated or free content attracts online traffic naturally and builds domain authority. To enhance the visibility of gated content, they may integrate its summary or preview on the freely available blogs, articles, or web pages. This strategy boosts curiosity and encourages users to click, register, and then read.

User Experience and Engagement

User experience is vital for SEO services’ success. Gated content, for sure, requires registration. And if one faces any barrier in registration or subscribing, it will be counted as a negative impact. This can maximize bounce rates and minimize engagement rates.

It’s obvious that high-value content that does not need any registration to access is users’ cup of tea. They are fond of exploring it over and over. On the flip side, 60% of users state that they are less likely to engage with content that needs upfront submission of personal information, according to a survey by the Content Marketing Institute.

Strategies for Optimising Gated Content for SEO

However, it is less likely to be indexed, but these SEO strategies can enhance its reach and visibility.

Optimize Landing Pages

Like freely available content, ensure that the gated content page is completely optimized. Simply put, it should have relevant keywords, meta titles, descriptions, and high-quality internal linking.

Besides, ensure that forms are free from glitches. They must be user-friendly and easy to fill without any friction. This will also help in maximizing its conversion rates and user satisfaction.

Use of Structured Data

If your content responds to common pain points or serves something unique, ensure that it has data markup integrated. This approach will maximize its chances of appearing in rich snippets, which eventually enhances the visibility of the landing page. Actually, search engines won’t face any challenges in understanding the content this way, and hence, publish it in rich snippets.

Utilise schema markup to integrate additional context, which makes it super easy for search engines to understand the content and hence, index it.

Promote Gated Content Strategically

It’s no less than an uphill battle to promote gated content. You may try sharing valuable pieces as teasers on social media like Facebook, Twitter, etc. to engage users and drive traffic to the landing page.

Running an email marketing campaign can also help this digital content gain popularity. You may use existing contacts to make this strategy successful.

Analyse and Adjust

You must be regular with tracking the performance of gated content. Track the traffic, conversions, and other SEO metrics to make further informed changes to your content strategy. This can be conveniently done by utilizing A/B testing. You may go ahead with different versions of content and discover which approach attracts desirable results.

Conclusion

Gated content is hidden content that is accessible to subscribers and registered users. This type of digital content is shared through newsletters, ebooks, articles, or magazines digitally. Certainly, it is challenging to promote that valuable content because of its limited reach and accessibility. But, with some smart SEO strategies and optimization, this content can be easily indexed and popularised online.