Is it OK to dynamically serve different content to paid and non-paid traffic from the same URL?

[Horizon_SEO]

Hi Moz!

We're trying to serve different content to paid and non-paid visitors from the same URL. Is this black hat?

Here's the reason we want to do this -- we're testing a theory that paid ads boost organic rankings. This is something we saw happen to a client and we want to test this further. But we have to have a different UX that's more sparse and converts better for paid.

Thanks for reading!

[Alick300]

Hi David,

First of all as far as I know paid campaign doesn't helps in organic ranking. Google repeatedly said that paid campaign doesn't affect organic rankings.

As far as I know Google says that showing one version to users and other version to boat is called cloaking and we must not use this but didn't say anything on paid & non paid visitors.

If I assume that paid campaign helps in organic ranking then it is the only one thing that can affect ranking by paid campaign that is CTR.

I do run AdWords campaign for my website over 8 years and CTR is minimum 10% but I never noticed that paid campaign helps in ranking.

** I wouldn't suggest you to do that***

Please also check this once @ https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6020954?hl=en&rd=1#701

Hope this helps you.

Thanks

[Horizon_SEO]

Hi Highland,

Thanks for the quick response!

I wasn't clear in my question. The paid visitors I'm referring to are visitors coming through search ads, not people who are subscribed to our service. So this isn't regarding paywalls. Rather, we're trying to send paid traffic to a page to see if it will increase its rankings. At the same time, we want to have a different user experience for paid and non-paid visitors to increase conversions.

Also we'd like to have different content for the two versions, not just have one version with no/little content and another with all of it.

[Highland]

Google's rule on paywalls is that you have to offer up some content for free to searchers. So, for instance, if you search for a NY Times article and click in, they'll tell you how many free articles you have left before you have to pay. Google, of course, can see all that content.

Search Engine Land had a good article on paywall implications