PAYWALLS: EXPERT TIPS FOR TECHNICAL AND EDITORIAL SEO

Summary from the TLDR Marketing newsletter

Publisher paywalls require both editorial and technical alignment to avoid damaging SEO performance. Engagement signals like Navboost penalize pages with high bounce rates, and paywalled stories tend to have shorter visibility in Top Stories as a result. A strong editorial approach links free top-of-funnel content to locked premium pieces, creating a second click that moves readers closer to converting. Technically, the most common issue is missing or incorrect structured data, particularly the "isAccessibleForFree" attribute and CSS selectors that help Google properly crawl gated content.