How to handle mobile site with less pages than the main site?
-
We are developing a mobile version of our website that will utilize responsive design/dynamic serving.
About 70% of the main website will be included in the mobile version. What (if anything) should be the redirect for pages not included in the mobile version of the site?
Also - for one specific section users will be redirected from that page to the homepage, what is the redirect that should be used for this?
Thanks!
-
Hi there!
You shared that you're using responsive along with dynamic serving (can you please specify more?), since for any of those two approaches you will be providing the same URLs for both mobile and desktop users and crawlers, you won't need to redirect:
- With responsive: You use CSS Media Queries and the same HTMLs for both mobile and desktop purposes. Your design will be fluid and always "fit" the visitors device, you won't need to serve different HTMLs nor redirect.
- With dynamic serving: You serve different HTMLs based on the user agent (mobile or desktop) through the same URLs. Since the different HTMLs will be shown through the same URLs no redirect is needed neither. What you need to make sure to effectively implement user agent detection (avoiding the errors specified by Google here), using the vary HTTP header, as explained here.
On the other hand, the mobile Web approach that does need redirects is when you set a parallel mobile Website, for which you will enable a mobile targeted Web version through their specific URLs (it's recommended to show them in an "m" subdomain, following a clean and optimized URL naming system that can easily refer to the desktop one), for example:
- Category A for Desktop version: www.yourbrand.com/category-a/
- Category A for Mobile version: m.yourbrand.com/category-a/
For this last setting you do need redirects, along with the usage of rel="alternate" tag pointing to the corresponding mobile URL from their desktop URL version and a rel="canonical" tag pointing to the corresponding desktop URL from their mobile URL version, in a page to page basis, as described here.
If at some point you have a desktop URL that doesn't have a mobile version (or viceversa, a mobile URL that doesn't have a desktop version) then you shouldn't really do anything "extra" really, since:
- If for some reason a user can end-up visiting for a URL targeting another device and you don't have it, then it's better to leave the users browsing through the other Web version, since you don't really have that content still optimized for them and although not optimized from a user experience perspective, this is better than implement "non-relevant redirects" that would "force" these users to go to other URLs that although will be optimized for Mobile, won't provide the content that they're looking to consume.
- If you correctly configure your mobile and desktop versions tagging they shouldn't rank in the search results that they're not targeting to so the previous situation really would happen mostly if someone directly shares a specific Mobile URL to Desktop users and you don't have that Desktop version for that URL, for example, or viceversa.
So to avoid this type of situation directly the best is to have always a mobile version of your desktop URLs and viceversa, although as you can see, if this is not possible, the alternative scenario (to leave it as it is) is not really negative and shouldn't affect a high amount of your users.
If you have any question or additional doubt, please let me know!
Thanks,
Aleyda
-
2 things - if you are sniffing a browser agent you can sniff and redirect
the other is that if you are designing a responsive website then you shouldn't need to change the content on the site to make it effective on mobiles. I do understand in some cases it can't be avoided but where that is a case you should forward to a subdomain making it easy to deal with redirects
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
-
New site: More pages for usability, or fewer more detailed pages for greater domain authority flow?
Ladies and gents! We're building a new site. We have a list of 28 professions, and we're wondering whether or not to include them all on one long and detailed page, or to keep them on their own separate pages. Thinking about the flow of domain authority - I could see 28 pages diluting it quite heavily - but at the same time, I think having the separate pages would be better for the user. What do you think?
Technical SEO | | Muhammad-Isap1 -
Mobile site not ranking
Hello, I have a m.site.com version of my original site. It is about 1/10 the size, and no matter what I do-I can't get the site to rank. I've added more pages and specified canonical etc etc. Should I add as many pages as my larger site has? Are there specific places I should be submitting this version beyond the typical? I am at a loss, so any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! L
Technical SEO | | lfrazer1 -
301 Multiple Sites to Main Site
Over the past couple years I had 3 sites that sold basically the same products and content. I later realized this had no value to my customers or Google so I 301 redirected Site 2 and Site 3 to my main site (Site 1). Of course this pushed a lot of page rank over to Site 1 and the site has been ranking great. About a week ago I moved my main site to a new eCommerce platform which required me to 301 redirect all the url's to the new platform url's which I did for all the main site links (Site 1). During this time I decided it was probably better off if I DID NOT 301 redirect all the links from the other 2 sites as well. I just didn't see the need as I figured Google realized at this point those sites were gone and I started fearing Google would get me for Page Rank munipulation for 301 redirecting 2 whole sites to my main site. Now I am getting over 1,000 404 crawl errors in GWT as Google can no longer find the URL's for Site 2 and Site 3. Plus my rankings have dropped substantially over the past week, part of which I know is from switching platforms. Question, did I make a mistake not 301 redirecting the url's from the old sites (Site 2 and Site 3) to my new ecommerce url's at Site 1?
Technical SEO | | SLINC0 -
Crawl Test Report only shows home page and no inner site pages?
Hi, My site is [removed] When I first tried to set up a new campaign for the site, I received the error: Roger has detected a problem: We have detected that the root domain [removed] does not respond to web requests. Using this domain, we will be unable to crawl your site or present accurate SERP information. I then ran a Crawl Test per the FAQ. The SEOmoz crawl report only shows my home page URL and does not have any inner site pages. This is a Joomla site. What is the problem? Thanks! Dave
Technical SEO | | crave810 -
Micro-sites for Landing Pages?
We are working with a site that is difficult at best to update. The client intends to re-do the site in 18 months or so but needs to start generating more traffic (and sales) now. What are thoughts on creating landing pages as micro-sites that point to the current site conversion page as a stop gap? Beyond not sharing authority is there any known penalty? By the way they don't have tremendous ranking right now - often bottom of page two - and the micro-site won't duplicate any content.
Technical SEO | | InformaticsInc0 -
Want to Target Mobile site for Google Mobile Version and Desktop Site for Google Desktop Version
I have ecommerce site with both mobile version and desktop version. Mobile version starts with m.example.com and full version starts with www.example.com I am using same content through out both site and using 301 redirection by detecting user agent vice-versa. My both sites are accessible to crawl by any google spider. I have submitted both sites's sitemap to GWT and mobile site having mobile sitemap xml, so google can easily recognize my mobile site. Is it going to help to rank my both sites as per my expectation? I need to rank for mobile site in Google mobile and ranking for desktop site in Google desktop version. Some of pages of my mobile site are started to appearing in Google desktop version. So how I can stop them to appear in Google desktop? Your comments are highly welcome.
Technical SEO | | Hexpress0 -
Some site pages are removed from Google Index
Hello, Some pages of my clients website are removed from Google Index. We were in top 10 position for some keywords but now I cannot find those pages neither in top 1000. Any idea what to do in order to get these pages back? thank you
Technical SEO | | besartbajrami0