Gated Content
Gated content is high-value, premium informational material, such as proprietary data reports, massive whitepapers, comprehensive templates, or exclusive webinars, that is hidden behind a lead capture form. Users must provide their contact information (typically an email address, name, and company) to access the asset. While gating content prevents Google from crawling and indexing the actual material for SEO, it is the primary mechanism for middle, of-funnel lead generation. The optimal strategy uses ungated, highly optimized SEO blog posts to drive massive organic traffic, and then embeds gated content within those posts to convert that traffic into actionable sales leads.
Gated Content Simplified
Gated content is a highly valuable report or guide that you give away for free, but only if the user gives you their email address first. You use regular, free articles to get people to your website, and then you offer them the gated content so your sales team can contact them later.