I would recommend the following setup: Book?page=1 for Search Engine Indexing & Silverlight Book#page=1 for Silverlight with deep linking and bookmarking
When the user hits the first URL (the one with HTML content) you render the full page in HTML, and then use JavaScript to instantiate the Silverlight control if the browser has the plugin installed. This means that if the user hits the link from Google, and have Silverlight, they get the full experience. If not - they get HTML, and Search enginges can index it. For the second URL (the #) you only render the Silverlight component, and dynamically load the correct content. To enable indexing of all content, you create a Sitemap file dynamically that links to all your Book?page=1 ... n. Your biggest problem with Silverlight and SEO is Page Rank, which is different from beeing able to index the content. Your user enters the page, opens a book and starts flipping pages. He finds something he want to blog about or share, so he copies the url: Book#page=4. He writes a blog post, linking to that URL. The problem is that when Google hits your blog, and finds the link to the Silverlight page, the crawler will ignore any #-link, meaning that a link to Book#page=4 only adds to the Page Ranke of Book. Do you follow? So the problem is that people using Silverlight will start linking to Book#page=4, while non Silverlight users will link to Book?page=4, which will generate the correct Page Rank. I think the only way to get around this (unless Google changes their crawler) - is to have a "Share this page" button, which will generate a Book?page=4 link and encoure users to share that URL on blogs/facebook etc. instead of sharing the Book#page=4 link which is what they can copy from the adress bar. Planning to do a blog post about this. :) - Jonas On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 6:38 AM, John OBrien <[email protected]>wrote: > Anyway know of a website rendering multiple pages of content that > provides a W3C compliant HTML version when the device can't use Silverlight? > > > > I have a client wanting to publish a book using a nice Silverlight > interface but still want the content available for SearchBots and those not > wanting or unable to install the runtime. > > The concept we proposed is to publish two versions, use # tags for > navigation in Silverlight, detect if not supported and redirect to HTML > version following similar URL structure with links to view/install > Silverlight. > > > > The concept is simple enough, no matter what link people bookmark others > will get to the same content, the user must choose to use the richer > interface if they end up on the HTML version. Is there a better way? > > > > Thanks, > > John. > ------------------------------ > Support procedure: https://www.codify.com/lists/support > List address: [email protected] > Subscribe: [email protected] > Unsubscribe: [email protected] > List FAQ: http://www.codify.com/lists/ozsilverlight > Other lists you might want to join: http://www.codify.com/lists -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Support procedure: https://www.codify.com/lists/support List address: [email protected] Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] List FAQ: http://www.codify.com/lists/ozsilverlight Other lists you might want to join: http://www.codify.com/lists
