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Feature Request: Google First-Click Free Plugin, Great for SEO and a powerful option for private forum sites

RL Robert Lawrence
Robert Lawrence
Member
Member since Feb 2013
52 posts
Feb 20, 2013 · 2:34 pm · Edited

I run a private forum and all the good stuff is being hidden behind the “paywall” but I want it indexed into Google for SEO reasons and to allow guests to view a post that they click on when coming from a search engine.

Google has something called First-Click Free and a lot of online publishers use this to entice readers to join.  You can read more about it here:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-click-free-for-web-search.html

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=74536

Basically it allows Google in to index your forum, then when your content comes up in the search engine, a guest can click on the link and is allowed to read the content.  When they go to read another piece of content, they are prevented.  This is great to get people to join.  And Google traffic helps you get more members.

I think this would be great for a plugin and is VERY powerful for SEO.  All that good juicy content is being hidden, put it to use to attract more traffic.

Please consider.

Anyone else interested in this?

3 Answers

New Answer
MP Mr Papa
Mr Papa
Member
Member since Dec 2006
19,448 posts
Feb 20, 2013 · 7:02 pm

have you not looked at the sneak peek feature?  does pretty much the same thing… exposes the forum and/or topic, but not the post content…  you can even redirect to ‘join’ page if they do access the content…  google will index the forum and the topics… and with proper seo settings and tags, will get good indexing…

RL Robert Lawrence
Robert Lawrence
Member
Member since Feb 2013
52 posts
Feb 20, 2013 · 7:33 pm

I am already using sneak peek, but it doesn’t let Google in to get all the post content and juicy SEO benefits.  Google First Click Free is a major tool in the publishing world.  There are a lot of SEO benefits to using it and forums could really gain.  All those pages of post content are being wasted (inside forums that are private or paid members only), when it could be used as a major traffic building tool to get new customers. 

YS Yellow Swordfish
Yellow Swordfish
Member
Member since Nov 2008
16,437 posts
Feb 21, 2013 · 4:15 am

I have opened a ticket so that we at least discuss this here.