# Soft paywall for SEO

**URL:** <https://forum.ghost.org/t/soft-paywall-for-seo/20138>\
**Category:** Using Ghost\
**Created:** [February 11, 2021, 5:34pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/soft-paywall-for-seo/20138 "2021-02-11T17:34:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![leo.bourrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/58f4c7/32.png) [@leo.bourrel](https://forum.ghost.org/u/leo.bourrel)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2021, 5:34pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/soft-paywall-for-seo/20138/1 "2021-02-11T17:34:42Z")

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Hello everyone,

Can paying pages be referenced by Google ? If no, is it possible to change the Ghost paywall system to a “soft paywall” ?  
I would like to have the 100 first words or character of my posts available to everyone so that it could be referenced from Google. Is it possible ?

Thanks

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**Author:** ![Kym](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/kym/32/1136_2.png) [@Kym](https://forum.ghost.org/u/Kym)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2021, 5:59pm UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/soft-paywall-for-seo/20138/2 "2021-02-11T17:59:06Z")

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@leo.bourrel you can still set custom meta data for protected posts, and you can also expose the custom excerpt in your theme’s `post.hbs` so that it appears on your page to all visitors.

That might help you to rank — but you shouldn’t necessarily expect protected posts to rank. Publishers who rely on SEO as a growth channel tend to publish certain content publicly, and then protect premium content for their members.

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**Author:** ![Interseed\_Team](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/interseed_team/32/11684_2.png) [@Interseed\_Team](https://forum.ghost.org/u/Interseed_Team)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2021, 9:04am UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/soft-paywall-for-seo/20138/3 "2021-02-16T09:04:45Z")

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Not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but this was just launched a couple of days ago; an easy way to soft-paywall

> **[Ghost Preview – Automatically add content preview for member-only posts on...](https://ghutils.dingran.me/)**
>
> Ghost Preview is one of the Ghost Utilities (Ghutils) that is built to make the blogging experience on Ghost platform better

I have no idea what the implications are for SEO though. But hope it helps

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**Author:** ![Caucasus-and-Mercury](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forum.ghost.org/caucasus-and-mercury/32/2467_2.png) [@Caucasus-and-Mercury](https://forum.ghost.org/u/Caucasus-and-Mercury)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2021, 9:39am UTC](https://forum.ghost.org/t/soft-paywall-for-seo/20138/4 "2021-02-16T09:39:51Z")

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Speaking of paywalled content and Google crawling I brought up a related issue a while ago [here](https://forum.ghost.org/t/feature-request-members-only-content-need-appropriate-schema-markup/18950).