Paywalled content and SEO on WordPress

Search engines can only rank what they can read, and a paywall exists to stop people reading. RedeemID settles that the way search engines ask publishers to: crawlers get the same page a locked reader gets, and the page says, in structured data, which part is behind the paywall.

What a crawler sees

A crawler is a guest. It gets the item’s title, its teaser (the part above the paywall break, or the first blocks) and the wall. The locked text is removed on the server before WordPress sends the page, so it is never in the HTML for a crawler to index or for a scraper to copy.

Paywall structured data

Each locked item’s page prints Article markup with isAccessibleForFree: false and a hasPart pointing at the wall (.redeemid-paywall). This is the markup Google documents for paywalled content: it tells the crawler the shorter page is a paywall, not cloaking. Yoast SEO and Rank Math also get teaser-only descriptions, so a meta description can’t quote the locked part. Sites that need to change the markup can filter it with redeemid_paywall_schema.

Search on your own site

Site search and REST search match a locked item on its title, excerpt and teaser only. Searching for a phrase that’s only in the locked part doesn’t list the item, so the results can’t confirm what’s behind the wall. Members still find locked items through their public text. See Where locked content stays hidden.

When to noindex

Locked items stay indexed by default, which is usually what a publisher wants: the teaser ranks and the wall converts. For content with no useful public part, such as member downloads or a members’ forum, set the post type to noindex under RedeemID → Access → Content rules. Its locked items then carry noindex and drop out of the WordPress sitemap.

Check it

Open a locked item in a private window and view the source: the teaser and the wall are there, the locked text isn’t.
Use the toolbar’s Access menu on the item to view it as a locked visitor.
Run the page through a structured data test to see the paywall markup.

Written for: Publishers

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