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Just got html snapshots working with the help of html-snapshot node module & following htaccess.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}  ^/$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^_escaped_fragment_=/?(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /snapshots/%1? [NC,L]

It is an angular application, but the question is universal to javascript spas/seo. Looked around the web found a good amount of articles but nothing complete which is surprising since seo is pretty important. In any case 3 questions

Using google fetch to confirm the proper outcome

  1. The rendering of the snapshot pages: Is the intention not to worry about the css or images or possible layout issues. For example, here is an example of a page of mine. The links and the main content are overlapping each other. Is that something we should be concerned about?

  2. Orange warming redirected label: This message is only warning us of the expected redirect, not that there is an issue that need to fix? See image

  3. Submit to index: Should we? My first assumption was not to and just make sure site and that is submitted.

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    The use of _escaped_fragment_ is not recommended any more: webmasters.googleblog.com/2015/10/…
    – Quentin
    Commented May 18, 2016 at 13:28
  • @Quentin thanks. But just to reinforce my reading of that we should maintain ` <meta name="fragment" content="!">`for javascript framework sites(spas), but get away from any pre-rendering/snapshots/use of escape fragment convention
    – jamie
    Commented May 19, 2016 at 1:24
  • No. Don't use _escaped_fragment_. Don't use <meta name="fragment" content="!">. Do use the History API. When the browser directly requests /foo/example (e.g. from a link from an external site, or a bookmark, or the user typing the URL) then do generate the HTML for entire page on the server. When a user follows a link on your site to /foo/example then use JS to transform the DOM to match what the server would render and use pushState to set the URL to /foo/example so that you don't have to load the whole page.
    – Quentin
    Commented May 19, 2016 at 7:11

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So with the help of @Quentin & this link that was provided, I got enough to answer to my question.

  1. It's recommended not to use the escaped fragment convention

  2. And if you are looking to use it with the intention to degrade gracefully, suit other search engines the bottom line is to not use snapshots or at least in this convention. According to google

In general, websites shouldn't pre-render pages only for Google -- we expect that you might pre-render pages for performance benefits for users and that you would follow progressive enhancement guidelines. If you pre-render pages, make sure that the content served to Googlebot matches the user's experience, both how it looks and how it interacts. Serving Googlebot different content than a normal user would see is considered cloaking, and would be against our Webmaster Guidelines.

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