What is your mobile website strategy?
-
Do you have one where you deliver the same content to the desktop (rich user experience) as well as mobile websites?
In our case we provide content to www.domain.com, m.domain.com (for smart phones not using our native apps) and mo.domain.com (for older feature phones). We found that in some instances Google favours the indexing of our mobile content over our desktop site and we have now started pointing canonical content to our desktop site (i.e. to www.domain.com).
Possible downside is that Google might not present desktop indexed content on mobile devices. This is not really a big issue, as currently Google presents mobile content for desktop searches.
A better approach would have been responsive design, but we feel that dedicated apps will rule the mobile device space and desktop-websites will evolve to allow content to be displayed on all devices (we consider our m.domain.com and mo.domain.com stop-gaps to overcome legacy device issues and bandwidth limitations).
What is your mobile device strategy with regards to SEO?
-
Hey Gerd
I tend to feel that in most cases a responsive design is going to be the best approach or failing that, an automated mobile site much like WPTouch for WordPress.
There are lots of reasons why I feel different mobile sites are a bad approach and just the physical management of two (or three) sites along with the optimisation etc is reason enough for most businesses to want to simplify their approach with a responsive site.
As ever though, there are always a lot of moving parts and the right answer is the answer that is right for the specific business. For us, we use WPTouch on the back of WordPress and will be moving to a fully responsive site when we next do a redesign.
I rattled out some of my thoughts on mobile sites and SEO here:
http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/responsive-web-design/
I think the very fact that responsive is Google's preferred approach is reason enough for most people to take that approach. Couple that with the simplification in the management and reduced workload over running multiple sites then it is the most common sense option for most folks.
Of course, this does not stop you serving up content via specific applications on smart phones and other devices but that is really outside the scope of SEO considerations.
Just my tuppence / 5 cents!
Cheers
Marcus
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
-
HTML and XML sitemaps for one website.
Hi all, First, we have created a HTML sitemap for our wordpress website. Then we again generated XML sitemap and submitted same in search console. It's been more than a week and still new XML sitemap has not been indexed yet. I can still only see HTML sitemap for search results "company sitemap". Also search console do have only XML sitemap. Both sitemaps are accessible but only HTML has been indexed. Is there anything wrong having 2 sitemaps? Why XML sitemap not been indexed? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Website removed from Bing and Yahoo index
Hi, are website servicemanualrepairs.com was removed from Bing and Yahoo index, I emailed Bing via Webmaster tools they first said it was Backlinks I did look via at the inbound links tool to analyze the site's Backlinks I did find 20 links and used the Disavow tool, they said "I'm afraid but after careful and thorough investigation, your site still did not meet the Bing and Microsoft guidelines You may also refer to the things to avoid section of the Webmaster Guidelines for additional information. As an effect, the site is still blocked and it cannot be lifted" the website was in Bing and Yahoo index for 3 Years and only after the 20 Backlinks were added to the site it was de-index any help would be greatly appreciated Thanks
Web Design | | vista5211 -
Is there an issue if we show our old mobile site to Google & new site to users
Hi, We have our existing mobile site that contains interlinking in footer & content and new mobile site that does not have interlinking. We will show existing mobile site to google crawler & new mobile site to users. Will this be taken as black hat by Google. The mobile site & desktop site will have same url across devices & browsers. Regards
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
Best strategy for multiple internal links
We have a website that has a whole heap of internal links. After re-structuring the footer links to the main categories we are now looking at the best way to display the internal links from each category (approx 20-50 links from each). At present they are simply listed on the corresponding category page, however this doesnt look great so we want to display them in a way that is user friendly and also seo friendly. Any suggestions and examples appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Web Design | | Silkstream0 -
Best way to handle Spanish/English WEBSITE
Hey guys, How are you doing? I have a website (www.aceromart.com ) in which the primary language is Spanish. The company is oriented toward the Mexican Audience. However, recently we are dealing with many U.S companies. Also, we want to be included in the Yahoo Directory and several other directories which demand a U.S version of the website. So i want to have a U.S version of the website. My ecommerce is based in the NETWORK Solutions platform and has around 1,000 products and pages. What is the best way to include an English version of the website. Ive seen some pages using the Google traslate tool, which only traslates the text. Hope to hear some of your ideas, Regards,
Web Design | | JesusD0 -
Best SEO Strategy for Social Games
Hi all - wondering if you can help.... We have a social gaming startup with a few million users. Our first game is http://iamplayr.com (currently just a landing page) - now we're just about to launch some more games. We'll have approx 6 titles by the end of the year (note most of our users are on Facebook.com).I'm a little unsure the best way to approach this from an SEO perspective. 1) Should we direct everything to a games specific .com site like http://iamplayr.com -> and if so, should we build out this site to attract more keywords2) Direct everything to our Facebook app e.g. http://farmville.com 3) Have 1 central site for our multiple titles, with each game having a subdomain e.g. ala King.com / Zynga.com etc? What you recommend? Our goal is to have a managable 'off Facebook' strategy that attracts maximum organic traffic for keywords e.g. 'free football game' etc Thanks 🙂 H
Web Design | | HowardK0 -
Are iPads and other tablets considered mobile devices?
A colleague and I were discussing whether or not iPads should be considered mobile devices. Obviously, developing for a mobile phone is different than developing for an iPad so we're trying to determine if mobile is the correct umbrella to put both of these devices under.
Web Design | | TheOceanAgency2