Ever Wondered how Subscriptions and Paywalled content data gets structured? Or Which Schema is used for structuring Subscription and Paywalled Content? The Answer is JSON-LD Schema.
JSON-LD Schema is used for indicating subscription and Paywalled content over websites. The JSON-LD Markup helps Google to differentiate paywalled content from cloaking practice.
PRO TIP: Cloaking violates Google’s Guidelines.
WHAT ARE THE GUIDELINES TO FOLLOW?
Apart from General Structured Data Guidelines and Technical Guidelines, the below-listed guidelines are applied to Paywalled Content:
- Specify your data using JSON-LD Or Microdata format
- Do not nest contest sections.
- Always Use .class sectors for the cssSelector property.
PRO TIP: Violating the above-stated policies will make you ineligible for display on Google search results.
HOW DO I ADD STRUCTURED DATA TO PAYWALLED CONTENT?
If your website offers subscription-based access to its contents or if users have to register for accessing any content which you want to be indexed, then follow the below-listed steps. Follow these steps for AMP and non AMP pages. We can learn this by the following example: This following example refers to NewsArticle data.
- Always add a class name around each paywalled section of your page.
- Add the NewsArticle structured data.
- Do not forget to add the highlighted JSON-LD structured data to your NewsArticle structured data.
PRO TIP: The cssSelector refers to the class name added by you in step 1.
You can add this markup to multiple paywalled sections as well.
WHAT CONTENT IS SUPPORTED BY THE MARKUP?
The markup supports the below-listed content:
- News Article
- Article
- Blog
- How-TO
- Message
- Review
- Webpage
- Course
- Comment
AMP INSPECTIONS:
Keep in mind the following considerations when working with AMP pages:
- Use amp-subscriptions wherever appropriate for AMP pages with paywalled content.
- Ensure that your said authorization endpoint always grants access to content to the appropriate bots from Google and Other. It differs with publishers.
- Make sure that your AMP and NON-AMP pages have the same bot access policy, otherwise, this can lead to content mismatch errors that will appear in the Search Console.
HOW TO CRAWL AND INDEX YOUR STRUCTURED DATA PAGES:
- Do not use these steps for crawling and indexing page content outside of a paywall which is visible to all.
- For wanting google to crawl and index your entire page, ensure that GoogleBot and GoogleBot-News if applicable, can access your page
- If you do not want Google to show the cached link of your page, then use the noarchive robots meta tag.
PRO TIP: For knowing the various ways of fixing troubleshooting problems, check out the previous posts of the series.
In the next post of the All About Data Structure Series, I will throw light on the Logo Schem.org Markup.
