What should I know about redirecting users based on cookies?

[DA2013]

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!

[RyanPurkey]

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.