Mobile Site Annotations
-
Our company has a complex mobile situation, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to implement bidirectional annotations and a mobile sitemap. Our mobile presence consists of three different "types" of mobile pages:
-
Most of our mobile pages are mobile-specific "m." pages where the URL is completely controlled via dynamic parameter paths, rather than static mobile URLs (because of the mobile template we're using). For example: http://m.example.com/?original_path=/directory/subdirectory. We have created vanity 301 redirects for the majority of these pages, that look like http://m.example.com/product that simply redirect to the previous URL.
-
Six one-off mobile pages that do have a static mobile URL, but are separate from the m. site above. These URLs look like http://www.example.com/product.mobile.html
-
Two responsively designed pages with a single URL for both mobile and desktop.
My questions are as follows:
-
Mobile sitemap: Should I include all three types of mobile pages in my mobile sitemap? Should I include all the individual dynamic parameter m. URLs like http://m.example.com/?original_path=/directory/subdirectory in the sitemap, or is that against Google's recommendations?
-
Bidirectional Annotations: We are unable to add the rel="canonical" tag to the m. URLs mentioned in section #1 above because we cannot add dynamic tags to the header of the mobile template. We can, however, add them to the .mobile.html pages. For the rel="alternate" tags on the desktop versions, though, is it correct to use the dynamic parameter URLs like http://m.example.com/?original_path=/directory/subdirectory as the mobile version target for the rel="alternate" tag? My initial thought is no, since they're dynamic parameter URLs. Is there even any benefit to doing this if we can't add the bidirectional rel="canonical" on those same m. dynamic URLs?
I'd be immensely grateful for any advice! Thank you so much!
-
-
Yup, you've got it!
-
Thanks for the great advice, Kristina! I really appreciate it.
You raise a good point on the vanity vs. parameter URL risks. We primarily use these static 301 vanity URLs for ad campaigns and media buys, so we're not using them in any internal linking. The template we use for our mobile environment, called Kony, doesn't actually have "links" on the back end of the site the same way a desktop site would - they're more like buttons that load a specific set of content without using a unique, canonical URL for that content - this is why all of our mobile pages on this environment are parameter URLs based on the user path, not "real" URLs. Weird, I know!
I think that's an excellent idea to specify in Webmaster Tools that our mobile parameters determine our content, just so Google knows.
So just to confirm your recommendations around the mobile sitemap - we should create a single sitemap that includes the parameter URLs (http://m.example.com/?original_path=/directory/subdirectory) as well as the static .mobile.html pages (http://www.example.com/product.mobile.html)? There is no content overlap between the two environments. I assume we should not include the responsive design URLs, since they're not exclusively mobile URLs?
Thanks again!
-
Hi Critical Mass,
Before I answer your direct questions, I think you're putting yourself in a tricky situation by creating vanity 301 redirects to those dynamic mobile URLs. If someone ever links to the mobile version of your page, they're going to use the URL with parameters, because that's the page they end up on. That means that all inbound links will point Google to your parameter URLs and all internal links will point to the static URLs you've created. Link equity will be split, and all pages will suffer for it.
It's true that Google understands static URLs a bit better than it understands URLs built with parameters, but it does understand that sometimes parameters define content. I recommend getting rid of those static URLs, then using Google Webmaster Tools to explicitly say, "these parameters define content." You can learn more about how to do this here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1235687?hl=en
Now, to answer your questions:
-
You should only include the URLs that you want Google to index. If you follow my recommendation above, this is now an easy question to answer.
-
Yes, use the rel="alternate" tag on your desktop pages! Like I said, Google understands that parameters can determine content. You want to connect the two pages as much as possible, even if you can't canonical back.
Hope this helps!
Kristina
-
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
-
Two sites with same content
Hi Everyone, I am having two listing websites. Website A&B are marketplaces Website A approx 12k listing pages Website B : approx 2k pages from one specific brand. The entire 2k listings on website B do exist on website A with the same URL structure with just different domain name. Just header and footer change a little bit. But body is same code. The listings of website B are all partner of a specific insurance company. And this insurance company pays me to maintain their website. They also look at the traffic going into this website from organic so I cannot robot block or noindex this website. How can I be as transparent as possible with Google. My idea was to apply a canonical on website B (insurance partner website) to the same corresponding listing from website A. Which would show that the best version of the product page is on website A. So for example :www.websiteb.com/productxxx would have a canonical pointing to : www.websitea.com/productxxxwww.websiteb.com/productyyy would have a canonical pointing to www.websitea.com/productyyyAny thoughts ? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Evoe0 -
How are these sites ranking!?!
One of our clients is in the insurance industry and over the last 12 months we have seen an increasing number of low quality, newly registered, spammy sites achieving top 5 rankings for major keywords, which in turn is having an adverse effect on the rankings for our client. Does anyone have any idea how the following sites have managed to do this: http://www.multiquotetaxi.co.uk/ - 2nd for taxi insurance http://www.motortradefast.co.uk/ - 1st for motor trade insurance http://www.traders-insurance.com/ - 3rd for motor trade insurance http://www.multiquotefleet.co.uk/ - 1st for fleet insurance We have tried reporting the above sites, tried holding out to see if they get penalised and tried figuring out what they have done ourselves but cannot see how they have managed it. Any ideas at all?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | instinctive0 -
Technical Site Questions
When i do a google cache of our site, i see 2 menus, our developers say that's because the 2nd is for the mobile menu - is that correct, as when i look up other sites that have mobile rendering they only have one menu visible. Plus GWT's has the number of internal links per page at least x2 what they should have - are they connected? Secondly when i do a spider test through http://tools.seobook.com/general/spider-test/ it shows all "behind the scenes text" eg font names, portals, sliders, margins - "font size px" is shown as 17 times and a density of 2.15% - surely this isnt correct as google will be thinking that these are my keywords !? My site is www.over50choices.co.uk Thanks Ash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep10 -
Recovering from a site migration
Hi. I've been working on http://www.alwayshobbies.com/ for a number of months. All was fine, but then we had a site migration which involved a huge number of redirects. There's been a couple of similar moves in the past. As a result, rankings have plummeted. To resolve this, we're considering letting all the old pages 404 by turning of the redirects, and removing all links to them where we can. Some key pages could have canonicals added, but basically we're looking to purge as much as possible. Does this sound like a reasonable tactic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
Link juice site structure?
If we have a top nav with contact us, about us, delivery, FAQ, Gallery, how to order ect but none of these we want to rank and then we have the usual left hand nav.are we wasting juice with the top nav and would we be better either removing it and putting them further down the page or consolidating them and adding an extra products tab so the product pages are first.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Our quilting site was hit by Panda/Penguin...should we start a second "traffic" site?
I built a website for my wife who is a quilter called LearnHowToMakeQuilts.com. However, it has been hit by Panda or Penguin (I’m not quite sure) and am scared to tell her to go ahead and keep building the site up. She really wants to post on her blog on Learnhowtomakequilts.com, but I’m afraid it will be in vain for Google’s search engine. Yahoo and Bing still rank well. I don’t want her to produce good content that will never rank well if the whole site is penalized in some way. I’ve overly optimized in linking strongly to the keywords “how to make a quilt” for our main keyword, mainly to the home page and I think that is one of the main reasons we are incurring some kind of penalty. First main question: From looking at the attached Google Analytics image, does anyone know if it was Panda or Penguin that we were “hit” by? And, what can be done about it? (We originally wanted to build a nice content website, but were lured in by a get rich quick personality to rather make a “squeeze page” for the Home page and force all your people through that page to get to the really good content. Thus, our avenge time on site per person is terrible and Pages per Visit is low at: 1.2. We really want to try to improve it some day. She has a local business website, Customcarequilts.com that did not get hit. Second question: Should we start a second site rather than invest the time in trying to repair the damage from my bad link building and article marketing? We do need to keep the site up and running because it has her online quilting course for beginner quilters to learn how to quilt their first quilt. We host the videos through Amazon S3 and were selling at least one course every other day. But now that the Google drop has hit, we are lucky to sell one quilting course per month. So, if we start a second site we can use that to build as a big content site that we can use to introduce people to learnhowtomakequilts.com that has Martha’s quilting course. So, should we go ahead and start a new fresh site rather than to repair the damage done by my bad over optimizing? (We’ve already picked out a great website name that would work really well with her personal facebook page.) Or, here’s a second option, which is to use her local business website: customcarequilts.com. She created it in 2003 and has had it ever since. It is only PR 1. Would this be an option? Anyway I’m looking for guidance on whether we should pursue repairing the damage and whether we should start a second fresh site or use an existing site to create new content (for getting new quilters to eventually purchase her course). Brad & Martha Novacek rnUXcWd
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BradNovi0 -
Optimal site structure for travel site
Hi there, I am seo-managing a travel website where we are going to make a new site structure next year. We have about 4000 pages on the site at the moment. The structure is only 2-levels at the moment: Level 1: Homepage Level 2: All other pages (4000 individual pages - (all with different urls)) We are adding another 2-3 levels, but we have a challenge: We have potentially 2 roads to the same product (e.g. "phuket diving product") domain.com/thailand/activities/diving/phuket-diving-product.asp domain.com/activities/diving/thailand/phuket-diving-product.asp I would very much appreciate your view on the problem: How do I solve this dilemma/challenge from a SEO standpoint? I want to avoid DC if possible, I also only want one landing page - for many reasons. And usability is of course also very important. Best regards, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sembseo0 -
Advice on Getting this site ranking?
Hi there I'm looking to optimise this site for SEO -> Gets about 3,000 visits per day but all from branded searches. Gets virtually no 'keyword searches' It's just a landing page at the moment. Would you recommend I integrate a blog with it, so we can start targeting more long tail keywords (free football game etc) Any thoughts/advice appreciated 🙂 Thanks Howard
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HowardK0