In a recent post, Lee Odden ask the question, “Why would you want your “members access only” content available to search engines?”

Some sites have most of their content behind a login. Usually, search engine spiders can’t find the content behind the login to index and include in the search results.

You may want to rethink the decision to have your content hidden behind a login. Lee says, “The more web pages a search engine can find, index and include in the search results, the more entry points there are for new customers to find your web site content.” Of course, you want as many customers as possible to visit your site right?

There are reasons to hide your content however. An exception would be if the content were time sensitive. He points out that if the content were time sensitive, it wouldn’t make sense to allow search engines to index it, because obviously outdated content is no good to customers.

Lee wants to know if you made any of your content available to search engines that were previously hidden behind a login. What were the hurdles and how did it turn out?

Read the article and comment here.