Best way to handle link for login-protected pages

Question

I have a e-learning website with free and paid courses.

On my course page, there is link to the lessons.

If it is a paid course, when you click on the link you are redirected to the shop. See this example.

For my SEO, is there a better way to handle internal links that you can only access when logged on ?

Actually I use a rel="nofollow" (and learndash as LMS). I fear that too many 302 on my courses is not good.

Answer 1

I think you need to consider

1. do you want the contents indexed, ie viewable in searches.
2. what should happen when someone clicks on such a link.

My suggestions are

1. That only a summary page should be indexed. To do this, you need to remove all internal links to them. Have a login button, after which the links are revealed. Don't mark them display=none. They should be absent altogether before logging in.

2. that they should return 403

The HTTP 403 Forbidden response status code indicates that the server understands the request but refuses to authorize it.

From developer.mozilla