Do links behind paywalls pass value?

[GBC]

Hi - we are about to have a product review go live on a site that uses a paywall.

Will the link from this still pass SEO value to our site, and should we therefore optimise it?

Thanks

[NakulGoyal]

Greg

A paywall is referring to content that is hidden behind a paid/membership system / member's only access. So if it's restricted to the bots, there's no SEO value.

It's like if you click on particular sections of SEOMoz, which are members only, they are not really open to the bots, in which case, there's no real direct traffic from Google hitting that page, so no SEO optimization needed. (Although there's a way to provide bots access to data behind your paywall and then it "could" be indexed. The question then becomes, would you want it indexed ?)

[NakulGoyal]

Anything that is restricted to the bots, not index-able...behind user/pass / paywalls can't be indexed (normally). So if that's the case, I would not worry about optimizing it for Search. It should still be optimized for users through :).

[AndreVanKets]

Hi,

Whats Paywall?

If its a do-follow link, and the page is indexed by Google (not hidden from Google), then it will pass value.

GREG