What should I know about redirecting users based on cookies?
-
Hi Moz!
My client wants to redirect users to a basic or professional version of their site based on cookies.
What do we need to do/know to make sure implementation is SEO-friendly?
What if a user has cookies turned off? Are there any other obstacles?
Thanks for reading!
-
For conditional based redirection you'll want to use a 302 or by dynamically serving the right HTML. Things to consider though:
- Which version will be indexed by Google? Will it be cached?
- Does the professional version require a login? https?
- What user hurdles could there be? Cookie off, not executing java script? Is the page crawler friendly? (Lynx test).
- How's this fit with the business plan?
- Etc.
If it's a paid professional service, it'd probably make more business sense to keep it behind a login. Otherwise your client could be giving away the keys. Moz.com itself is a good example though of a workable model... Here in the Q&A content is being generated that's basic / accessible, but the professional tools are served as part of an account based login.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Site redesign - 301 Redirects
I've just overhauled a website, leaving lots of former posts in the dust. I've set up a 404 redirect to the home page so that if anyone goes to one of those old pages they land on the home page instead of a dead 404. But, there's a couple urls from the old site I'd prefer to redirect to similar pages. These urls have forward slashes and I don't know how to get the slashes in when I copy it over to the new site. This is probably something easy, but I'm baffled. This www.lawbarron.com/personal-injury/whip-its-nitrous-oxide/ becomes this when I copy it www.lawbarron.com/personal-injury-whip-its-nitrous-oxide Can someone help me out?
Web Design | | julie-getonthemap0 -
Is the User Sitemap dead?
There's a discussion going on in our office about sitemaps. I thought it'd be a good idea to get the thoughts of the Moz community in on it, too. What are your thoughts? is the User Sitemap still an effective tool to utilize?
Web Design | | TaylorRHawkins1 -
New ecommerce site: Close old site and full domain redirect or keep it linking to new site?
We have rebranded and are working on our new site (B). Our old site (A) has a much higher domain/page authority than our new site. Currently we have the original Site A still there, with all links/pages pointing to the new Site B when people click. I am unsure whether we'd be best to close down the Site A completely and do a full domain redirect to Site B. Site A: 10 years age and has a moderate amount of links to it.
Web Design | | ModowestNZ
Homepage - PA: 24 DA:11 Site B: 6 months age, few links
Homepage - PA: 1 DA:2 My concern with the full domain redirect is that the indexed/ranking pages would dissapear. The benefit is less brand confusion for our niche range of party accessories.0 -
How to Redirect Old Domain to a New Domain?
One of my clients has chosen a new domain for her website so we will redirect the old domain to the new. I understand that once redirected, most of the authority built up over the years for the old domain will pass through to the new domain. Is this correct? Can this be done through the Wordpress dashboard, say with a plugin perhaps? I have a plugin called 404 Redirected I was going to try to use for this purpose. Finally, the client has other domains (5 total) she has used for one reason or another. She wants to consolidate all of them and have everything redirected to her new domain. Do you see any downside to this in terms of crawling, Google trust and authority? I know there are some user experience issues to deal with, but we're addressing those. I just don't want to do anything that may cause Google not to trust the new domain. Thanks, Dino
Web Design | | Dino640 -
Redirects Not Working / Issue with Duplicate Page Titles
Hi all We are being penalised on Webmaster Tools and Crawl Diagnostics for duplicate page titles and I'm not sure how to fix it.We recently switched from HTTP to HTTPS, but when we first switched over, we accidentally set a permanent redirect from HTTPS to HTTP for a week or so(!).We now have a permanent redirect going the other way, HTTP to HTTPS, and we also have canonical tags in place to redirect to HTTPS.Unfortunately, it seems that because of this short time with the permanent redirect the wrong way round, Google is confused as sees our http and https sites as duplicate content.Is there any way to get Google to recognise this new (correct) permanent redirect and completely forget the old (incorrect) one?Any ideas welcome!
Web Design | | HireSpace0 -
Redirecting duplicate pages
For whatever reason, X-cart creates duplicates of our categories and articles so that we have URLs like this www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars
Web Design | | k9byron
www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars/ or http://www.k9electronics.com/articles/anti-bark-collar
http://www.k9electronics.com/articles/anti-bark-collar/ now our SEO guy says that we dont have to redirect these because google is "smart enough" to know they are the same, and that we should "leave it as-is". However, everything I have read online says that google sees this as dupe content and that we should redirect to one or the other / or no /, depending on which most of our internal links already point to, which is with a slash. What should we do? Redirect or leave it as is? Thanks!0 -
Anyone have a good example of a CSS-based multi-level nav bar that is semantic (including link level subordination) and is ux positive?
Anyone have a good example of CSS-based multi-level nav bar that is semantic (including link level subordination) and is ux positive? Or am I gonna have to actually make one? Anyone have a good example of CSS-based multi-level nav bar that is semantic (including link level subordination) and is ux positive? Or am I gonna have to actually make one?
Web Design | | anns0 -
Looking for an open source or wordpress designer that knows seo best practices
I have almost lost my patience in trying to find a web developer for our project. I have searched high and low from freelancers to us based firms. All I can find; freelancers that can't get the job done, but promise they can and us based firms that are currently getting away with murder charging through the nose on work that is not acceptable to say the least. US based Firms 1. Seem to give you as little work as possible to increase their margin. I get it we all need to make money. 2. Everyone knows how to do everything until you start telling them that you have a little education in the industry and will be testing their work. All of the sudden they no longer talk to you. 3. Got a few recommendations and they are all subpar performers. After asking them why their builds load so slow or have so many errors they have excuses that point to the customer Freelancers over seas. 1. I am not sure where to start with this. I have searched high and low in freelancer for someone that I can trust to build a site. Of course there is a ton of junk to look through. After countless hours of narrowing down the individuals I am thinking of giving a shot I find that they are not capable of the job. All I want is a new website from a firm that is honest and knows what they are doing. That is educated in seo best practices. That can build a quality website and actually has references of sites they built that are still up and running and test out alright. It is pretty bad when web development companies miss simple items like h tags. Really? Does anyone know of someone that knows what they are doing? That can work with someone that knows how to run a dvd player. Just disappointing to see all these web companies and freelancers that get away with murder. Who earns their keep in this industry?!?!?!?
Web Design | | forecastedinvestments0