What should I know about redirecting users based on cookies?
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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!
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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.
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