SEO on a login based website

Question

Ok so say I have a website that the majority of content is behind a closed door, login screen for paying customers only. How can I let google know what is there so people can find the site through a search engine.

What programming techniques could I use to give more content to the google bot.

I will have some overview and demonstration screens to tempt the users but will these five to ten pages of content be enough for the search engines.

The key work is quite a highly sort one and there is quite alot of competition.

And before anyone asks the site is not a subscription porn site (Sadly)

Answer 1

Typically the sites I've seen show an abstract of the content on each page with a "to see the full article please login". This gives Google and visitors a chance to get a sample of what's available without giving away the crown jewels.

Don't be tempted to show the content without login if the user-agent is "googlebot" but demand a login from anyone else. This is against Google's terms and is trivially easy to circumvent. Experts Exchange tried this and ended up being blacklisted for a while in the rankings.

Answer 2

You mustn't expose content to Google that you do not expose to everyone. You will get blacklisted by them and achieve the opposite of what you are hoping for. The trick is to expose some key content that can be seen by everyone.

If you let us know what type of content you have could possibly be more helpful.