Mobile site ranking instead of/as well as desktop site in desktop SERPS
-
I have just noticed that the mobile version of my site is sometimes ranking in the desktop serps either instead of as well as the desktop site. It is not something that I have noticed in the past as it doesn't happen with the keywords that I track, which are highly competitive.
It is happening for results that include our brand name, e.g '[brand name][search term]'. The mobile site is served with mobile optimised content from another URL. e.g wwww.domain.com/productpage redirects to m.domain.com/productpage for mobile.
Sometimes I am only seen the mobile URL in the desktop SERPS, other times I am seeing both the desktop and mobile URL for the same product.
My understanding is that the mobile URL should not be ranking at all in desktop SERPS, could we be being penalised for either bad redirects or duplicate content?
Any ideas as to how I could further diagnose and solve the problem if you do believe that it could be harming rankings?
-
Hi Pugh,
Glad to hear it! Yes, you should also implement the tag on your homepages.
-
Hi Bridget,
Thanks for your response. Since asking the question I have implemented the advice that you offer.
Should there also be a rel=alternate and rel=canonical on the corresponding homepages?
-
Hi Pugh,
It sounds like you haven't implemented the rel=canonical tag for mobile. This tag works a bit like the hreflang tag, namely it prevents your mobile site from being viewed as duplicate content and should mean that your mobile URL is displayed in mobile SERPs and your desktop URL is displayed in desktop SERPs.
To implement (for more info see https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details
on the desktop page, add:
and on the **corresponding **mobile page, the required annotation should be:
This rel="canonical" tag on the mobile URL pointing to the desktop page is required.
Make sure you are referencing the corresponding URLs (so www.example.com/xyz and m.example.com/xyz, rather than simply referencing the mobile homepage).
Hope that helps!
-
Yea it's not that easy to just implement a responsive design unfortunately otherwise I would. That is the long term goal but not a realistic option at the moment, so in the meantime I need to solve the problem described.
-
Hello, I agree with Lesley here. Google stated recently that: “Google recommends webmasters follow the industry best practice of using responsive web design, namely serving the same HTML for all devices.“
take a minute from your time and read this article, am sure you will find it useful http://www.atladasmedia.co.uk/blog/why-google-loves-responsive-design/
-
Hi
My suggestion to you is to have one website which is Responsive (http://mashable.com/2012/12/11/responsive-web-design/)
This would prevent your traffic from being diluted to a mobi and desktop site but rather serve uses with one website that is optimised for all. This goes hand in hand with the user experience. UX and SEO works together.
Create a responsive desktop site and redirect the mobi site to it.
Hope this helps
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Tools/Software that can crawl all image URLs in a site
Excluding Screaming Frog, what other tools/software to use in order to crawl all image URLs in a site? Because in Screaming Frog, they don't crawl image URLs which are not under the site domain. Example of an image URL outside the client site: http://cdn.shopify.com/images/this-is-just-a-sample.png If the client is: http://www.example.com, Screaming Frog only crawls images under it like, http://www.example.com/images/this-is-just-a-sample.png
Technical SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Will Google Also Penalize Desktop Rankings If Your Site is Not Mobile Friendly?
Apologies if this question has already been answered. I was unable to find it. For desktop organic rankings: Will Google take into consideration mobile-readiness as a ranking factor? Thanks in advance for any reply, Kind regards,
Technical SEO | | Eric_Lifescript
Eric Darby1 -
Can I use high ranking sites to push my competitors out of the first page of search results?
I'm looking at a bunch of long tail low traffic keywords that aren't difficult to rank for. As I was idly doing a boring task my mind wandered and I thought.... Why don't I ask lots of questions about these keywords on sites such as Moz, Quora, Reddit etc where the high DA will get them to rank for the search term? The results on a SEO site or Q&A site won't be relevant and so I'd starve my competitors of some of their leads. Of course I'm not sure the effort would be worth it but would it work? (and no, none of my long tail keywords are included in this post)
Technical SEO | | Zippy-Bungle3 -
Can You Use More Then One Google Local Rich Snippet on a single site/ on a single page.
I am currently working on a website for a business that has multiple office locations. As I am trying to target all four locations I was wondering if it is okay to have more then one Local Rich Snippet on a single page. (For example they list all four locations and addresses within their footer and I was wondering if I could make these local rich snippets). What about having more then one on a single website. For example if a company has multiple offices located in several different cities and have set up individual contact pages for these cities, can each page have it's own Local Rich Snippet? Will Google look at these multiple "local rich snippets" as spaming or will they recognize the multiple locations and count it towards their local seo?
Technical SEO | | webdesignbarrie1 -
Double Slash // in URL
My client is using double forward slahes in URL like this "//" is this affecting SEO?
Technical SEO | | yanaiguana1110 -
Fixing a wordpress 404 error for /feed and /comments/feed?
I have a wordpress site that does not have a blog currently. I'm getting a 404 for /feed and /comments/feed. Anyone know how I can fix?
Technical SEO | | DM50 -
Why is this site ranking so good?
Site in question: http://bit.ly/aBvVbm Our main competitor in the UK seems to be ranking extremely good for the keyword "jigsaw puzzles" even though their linking profile doesn't seem all that great? They mainly have site-wide links on 2 of their other ecommerce sites which seem to be given them their ranking power as this equals to 100's of links. Does sitewide links on 2 sites really give this much ranking power or am I missing something?
Technical SEO | | Tonyy30 -
.COM vs .CA rankings - .CA ranks on Google.com
Hi SEOMOZers, We have a fairly large retail client with both .COM and .CA domains. Each of the sites are almost identical in design and, in most cases, content (these would be product pages). The .US site has been live for nearly 2.5 years while the Canadian probably over a year younger or so. Both sites are hosted in the US. What we're starting to see as of the last few months are searches that used to rank .COM product pages now rank the Canadian page above the US page on Google.com. We've checked Webmaster Tools for each site and they target the appropriate country. With nearly all examples we've seen, we haven't noticed any more links pointing to the Canadian page, and where this is becoming a widespread occurence we're not convinced it's a linking issue. My question is why Google might see both versions but rank the Canadian page above the US page on Google.com for a search being performed in the US? Does anyone have any ideas on why this may be happening?
Technical SEO | | HarborOneBank0