Indexing content behind a login

[stever999]

Hi,

I manage a website within the pharmaceutical industry where only healthcare professionals are allowed to access the content. For this reason most of the content is behind a login.

My challenge is that we have a massive amount of interesting and unique content available on the site and I want the healthcare professionals to find this via Google!

At the moment if a user tries to access this content they are prompted to register / login. My question is that if I look for the Google Bot user agent and allow this to access and index the content will this be classed as cloaking? I'm assuming that it will.

If so, how can I get around this? We have a number of open landing pages but we're limited to what indexable content we can have on these pages!

I look forward to all of your suggestions as I'm struggling for ideas now!

Thanks

Steve

[stever999]

Thanks everyone... It's not as restrictive as patient records... Basically, because of the way our health service works in the UK we are not allowed to promote material around our medicines to patients, it should be restricted only to HCP's. If we are seen to be actively promoting to patients we run the risk of a heavy fine.

For this reason we need to take steps to ensure that we only target this information towards HCP's and therefore we require them to register before being able to access the content...

My issue is that HCP's may search for a Brand that we supply but we have to be very careful what Brand information we provide outside of log-in. Therefore the content we can include on landing pages cannot really be optimised for the keywords that they are searching for! Hence why I want the content behind log-in indexed but not easily available without registering...

It's a very difficult place to be!

[stever999]

I guess I was just hoping for that magic answer that doesn't exist! It's VERY challenging to optimise a site with these kinds of restrictions but I get I just need to put what I can on the landing pages and optimise as best I can with the content I can show!

We also have other websites aimed at patients where all the content is open so I guess I'll just have to enjoy optimising these instead

Thanks for all your input!

Steve

[Everett]

Steve,

Yes that would be cloaking. I wouldn't do that.

As Pete mentioned below, your only real options at this point are to make some of the content, or new content, available for public use. If you can't publish abstracts at least, then you'll have to invest in copywriting content that is legally available for the public to get traffic that way, and do your best to convert them into subscribers.

[crackingmedia]

Hi Steve

If it can only be viewed legally by health practitioners who are members of your site, then it seems to me you don't have an option as by putting any of this content into the public domain on Google by whatever method you use will be deemed illegal by whichever body oversees it.

Presumably you cannot also publish short 25o word summaries of the content?

If not, then I think you need to create pages that are directly targeted at marketing the site to health practitioners. Whilst the pages won't be able to contain the content you want to have Google index, they could still contain general information and the benefits of becoming a subscriber.

Isn't that the goal of the site anyway, i.e. to be a resource to health practitioners? So, without being able to make the content public, you have to market to them through your SEO or use some other form or indirect or direct marketing to encourage them to the site to sign up.

I hope that helps,
Peter

[stever999]

Thanks all... Unfortunately it is a legal requirement that the content is not made publicly available but the challenge then is how do people find it online!

I've looked at first click free and pretty much ever other option I could think of and yet to find a solution

My only option is to allow Google Bot through the authentication which will allow it to index the content but my concern is that this is almost certainly cloaking...

[gazzerman1]

Please try looking at "First Click Free" by Google

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/74536?hl=en

I think this is along the lines of what you are looking for.

[crackingmedia]

Hi Steve

As you already know, if a page is not crawlable it's not indexable. I don't think there is any way around this without changing the strategy of the site. You said, _"We have a number of open landing pages but we're limited to what indexable content we can have on these pages". _Is that limitation imposed by a legal requirement or something like that, or by the site owners because they don't want to give free access?

If the marketing strategy for the site is to grow the membership, then as it's providing a content service to its members then it has to give potential customers a sample of its wares.

I think there are two possible solutions.

(1) increase the amount of free content available on the site to give the search engines more content to crawl and make available to people searching or

(2) Provide a decent size excerpt, say the first 250 words of each article as a taster for potential customers and put the site login at the point of the "read more". That way you give the search engines something to get their teeth into which is of a decent length but it's also a decent size teaser to give potential customers an appetite to subscribe.

I hope that helps,
Peter