Paid for News Media backlinks

[Switch_Digital]

We have been lucky to have some great coverage and resultant backlinks on some very high domain authority news sites such as The Times in the UK. Now that a lot of their content (including our articles and backlinks) is now gated because they are a subscription based, does:

Google site attribute the same domain authority to the subscription sites?

Does Google site crawl this content?

Does the same Google Juice flow once the site is gated?

Is the value of 'paid for content sites' eroded?

[CleverPhD]

It all depends on how the site works with Google.  Google has a "First Click Free" concept

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/74536?hl=en

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-click-free-for-web-search.html

Basically, it allows Google (and everyone else) to have access to new content the first time they crawl it

This was modified to 5 clicks in 24 hours only

http://paidcontent.org/2009/12/01/419-google-modifying-its-first-click-free-program-for-subscription-sites-5/

According to this article

http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/mar/26/telegraph-paywall

The Times is behind a full paywall.  You need to do some digging, heck ask the Times.   If they are not letting Google crawl it or a modified portion of it, you may not get SEO benefit "directly" (a la M. Cutts )

That said, there is a ton of indirect SEO that you can get from you.  If there are a bunch of people reading the paid version of the Time, they are going to tweet about it, talk about it on FB, mention it on blogs.  You will get direct referral traffic from it as well.  So, is it the same as a link from a publication that is completely free an online, no. I would not say that it makes it worthless.

Look at your analytics, how much traffic is coming from the Times?  Does it convert well?  If the answers are "lots" and "yes" - then keep doing it!  The other indirect benefits that I mention are gravy.