Mobile site not ranking
-
Hello,
Our main site ranks well for all the keyword terms, and yet, our mobile site is buried. It is a "m." configuration, and I am wondering if it is a question of not using the correct programming language to get it there? Or if the redirects to the main site should relate differently? I have tried to read up on the topic of mobile site SEO and cannot find (or understand) the answer? Could someone please help?
Thanks so much in advance!
-
Thanks all for your answers. I have read the same about redirecting, but our main site and our mobile site are very different: by both content and layout, as well as url naming structure. If a mobile version of the desktop page is completely different, do I need to do redirects and canonicalization? (i.e. home page on mobile site is completely different from home page on desktop, but both represent the same company). Thanks again for all your help!!!!
-
Hi Denise,
The first thing to do is to make sure that Google mobile/smartphone crawlers are able to correctly find and index the mobile subdomain, which is from what you describe the issue you have. In order to do this, you should verify:
- How your mobile site crawled by Google mobile/smartphone crawlers. You can do it with individual mobile pages going to the "Fetch as Google" option in Google Webmaster Tools and also crawl your whole site with Screaming Frog using the mobile user agents (you can select it by going to the "User Agent" option in the "Configuration" section). Like this you will be able to check if the mobile crawlers are able to find the correct site version and all of the URLs or if they are incorrectly redirected.
- If you have added canonical tags pointing from the mobile pages to the desktop ones without adding the "rel alternate" tags pointing from the desktop URLs to the mobile versions, as specified here. Or if you're not correctly using the canonical annotations placed in your mobile URLs in any other way too!
- If you are disallowing the m. subdomain with a robots.txt by mistake.
- If you are noindexing the pages in the m subdomain with the meta robots tag by mistake.
I hope this helps!
Aleyda
-
Thanks so much for your responses. Unfortunately, I am not entirely comfortable sharing our urls in the public forum. Would you be willing to receive a private message with the url? Or if there is a better way?
Thanks so much again
-
Denise
If you'd like to share/post your URL, I am sure somebody (including myself) maybe able to look and help diagnose the exact cause in your situation.
-
If you have a mobile equivalent page to your desktop page, make sure to redirect your mobile users to that page. Make sure that you do not redirect all users to the m. homepage, that creates a poor customer experience which Matt Cutts has said will result in poor rankings for your mobile site.
Make sure you use the correct canonical tagging between the mobile and desktop pages. GWT talks about the correct use of these tags here https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details
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
-
Website not ranking but the blog is!
I am hoping someone might be able to help me, I am doing some work on a website. A new version of the site was recently launched and since then rankings have plummeted and the new blog pages are ranking better! When the new version of the site went live, the domain changed to the non-www version, plus an incorrect robots.txt file and we have never really been able to fully recover (both of these things were beyond my control!). The robots.txt file was corrected and some of the external links links changed to the non-www but there is a 301 redirect in place so changing to the non-www shouldn't have been the reason to drop the site out completely. Before the launch of the new website, the site was ranking on the front page of Google for a lot of relevant keywords such as outdoor blinds, outdoor blinds Perth, cafe blinds, patio blinds, etc. The quality of the links is pretty bad and I am attempting to remove them before doing a disavow of all the really bad quality links but unless we were really unlucky I don't think it's the links right now that are causing the problem. I have ran the site through numerous crawl tests, checked the robots.txt, there are no messages in GWMT, the pages are indexed but I have a feeling there is something wrong with the site that is stopping this site from ranking well. If anyone could give me any insights I would be really grateful. I know the site could be better structured from a keyword/ structure perspective but the site was ranking fine!
Technical SEO | | Karen_Dauncey0 -
Ranking not improving
Our site is now 3 months old (although the domain is older) but rankings don't seem to be improving at all. We've got some good quality relevant links coming into the site, and the content is unique and often updated. Is there something holding the site back? Am I being impatient? the site is www.help-my-mobility.org Thanks.
Technical SEO | | jj34340 -
SEO for mobile
Hey everyone! I had just finished building my first mobile website and i wanna focus on SEO for mobile search. Now, since there is a redirection once a visitor enter to the web domain to the mobile site automatically (e.g. sample.com to m.sample.com). Question is: Where should i refer my back links to to improve my ranking on mobile result page? Would love for some help..
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
Duplicate Content - Mobile Site
We think that a mobile version of our site is causing a duplicate content issue; what's the best way to stop the mobile version being indexed. Basically the site forwards mobile users to "/mobile" which is just a mobile optimised version of the original site. Is it best to block the /mobile folder from being crawled?
Technical SEO | | nsmith7870 -
Is optimising on page mobile site content a waiste of time?
Good Morning from dull & overcast 2 degrees C wetherby UK 😞 Whilst Ive changed markup for seo purposes on desktop versions I would like to know if the principles of optimising on page content ie modifyting <title><h1> is exactly the same for <a href="http://www.innoviafilms.com/m/Home.aspx">http://www.innoviafilms.com/m/Home.aspx</a></p> <p>Whilst the desktop version of innovia films ranks well for the terms the client requested some time back now their attention is focusing on the mobile site but I feel a bit confused and I'll try my best to explain...</p> <p>Is it not totally redundant to "Optimise" a mobile site content as when i search via google on a smartphone i'm seeing the SERPS from the desktop version and when I click on a snippet the mobile site just piggybacks on the back of the listing anyway.</p> <p>Put another way is it not a royal waist of time tinkering with mobile site on page content for long as Googles SERPS on a smartphone are exactly the same as on a desktop ie they are not too seperate entities.</p> <p>Or am i totally wrong and you could optimise a mobile for a completely different term to its parent desktop version.?</p> <p>Tried to explain this the best i can, my head hurts... :-(</p> <p>Any insights</p> <p>welcome :-)</p></title>
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
Video submission sites
Hello, What are the top 5 sites for video submissions ? Any suggestions about which points should be taken into consideration when submitting videos ? Thanks
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Google and QnA sites
My website has a QnA site - a bit like this one except it's not private to premium members. It is a page with a left colomn for category links and it has a list of recently asked questions, each question is a link to view the full question and answers etc. Does google know this is a QnA ? Or will it say - hey, there are far too many links on this page, tut tut. Is there anything I can do to help it understand what the page is.
Technical SEO | | borderbound0 -
Delete old site but redirect domain to a new domain and site
I just have a quick query and I have a feeling about what the answer is so just wanted to see what you guys thought... Basically I am working on a client site. This client has a few other websites that are divisions of their company. However these divisions/websites are no longer used. They are wanting to delete the websites but redirect the domains to their name main website. They believe this will pass on SEO benefits as these old division sites are old and have a good PR and history. I'm unsure for DEFINITE, which way is correct?
Technical SEO | | Weerdboil0