Which version of pages should I build links to?
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I'm working on the site www.qualityauditor.co.uk which is built in Moonfruit.
Moonfruit renders pages in Flash. Not ideal, I know, but it also automatically produces an HTML version of every page for those without Flash, Javascript and search engines. This HTML version is fairly well optimised for search engines, but sits on different URLs.
For example, the page you're likely to see if browsing the site is at http://www.qualityauditor.co.uk/#/iso-9001-lead-auditor-course/4528742734
However, if you turn Javascript off you can see the HTML version of the page here <cite>http://www.qualityauditor.co.uk/page/4528742734</cite>
Mostly, it's the last version of the URL which appears in the Google search results for a relevant query. But not always. Plus, in Google Webmaster Tools fetching as Googlebot only shows page content for the first version of the URL. For the second version it returns HTTP status code and a 302 redirect to the first version.
I have two questions, really:
- Will these two versions of the page cause my duplicate content issues? I suspect not as the first version renders only in Flash. But will Google think the 302 redirect for people is cloaking?
- Which version of the URL should I be pointing new links to (bearing in mind the 302 redirect which doesn't pass link juice). The URL's which I see in my browser and which Google likes the look at when I 'fetch as Googlebot'. Or those Google shows in the search results?
Thanks folks, much appreciated!
Eamon
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Have you had any luck with your flash pages getting ranked? Build links to the pages that are getting ranked. Don't fight an uphill battle.
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Good advice Adam. I'm not sure how flexible Moonfruit is for adding custom HTML, but there must be a way to do this. Will investigate.
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Eamon,
If you can't get them to change their site to HTML only, I would setup canonical tags to tell Google that the HTML version of each page is the correct version.
~Adam
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