subjective v objective

[rayjam]

Just wondering what are the forum's views on the readability of cloaked pages. Is it worth actually writing legible text for a page that will not be read by anyone other than a spider or is it accepted that all pages should be legible and structured for human consumption regardless (just in case).

[Machiavelli]

Good question. Certainly if you are not going to use the NOARCHIVE option for google, you'll want a legible page. Similarly, if a search engine member of staff views the page (& presumably they'll see the cloaked version), they may become unfriendly to your site if they think you are spouting gibberish at them.

Anyone else? This is a problem I'm extremely keen to find out about.

[Air]

My preference is to use a structure that is readable for one simple reason, they rank better, and second, if reviewed they don't look like spam, and third hey have longevity (ok, that's three simple reasons). Some of those lengthy non-sensical <insert-keyword-phrase-here> pages can still rank well. You know the ones, they are ususally pointed out by webmasters as evidence that a search engine is not cleaning up spam, in reality they can be tough to detect if structured correctly - not recommended though, short lived hits.

One of the best structures I've found to have a page rank well is to use a set up like a FAQ page. A bunch of links that anchor to a bunch of responses in paragraph format on the same page. Very topic controllable and looks a lot like a forum.

[rayjam]

Thanks AIR that has given me a lot to think about. A whole new approach.