What Is Gated Content? Examples & Best Practices

What Is Gated Content?

Gated content is any type of content that prospects can only access after they’ve shared their contact information and other details (like their name, job title, and company). Usually through a lead capture form.

Like this example from the Stripe website:

Gated content includes interactive reports, webinars you can watch live or replay later, and downloadable white papers and ebooks.

Marketers like this tactic because high-quality content can be a compelling lead magnet. Meaning users are so eager to access it that they’re willing to share their contact information and agree to hearing from the company in the future.

In fact, 17% of marketers and business owners said gated content was their top-performing content in our 2023 State of Content Marketing Report.

Gated vs. Ungated Content

Ungated content is content that’s available to everyone without restriction. Most webpages are ungated and accessible to both users and search engines.

Is one better than the other?

It depends on your goals.

Gated content is designed to generate leads who you can nurture relationships with. But ungated content can meet many goals since there are no barriers to accessing it.

For example, ungated content can be a powerful tool for increasing visibility through search engine optimization (SEO) because it can be indexed by search engines.

That’s a big contrast to gated content, which typically blocks site crawlers from reading what’s behind the form. This means that...