Switchboard Tags - Multiple desktop pages pointing to one mobile page
-
I have recently started to implement switchboard tags to connect our mobile and desktop pages, and to ensure that our mobile pages show up in rankings for mobile users. Because our desktop site is much deeper in content than our mobile site, there are a number of desktop pages we would like to have point to one mobile page. However, with the switchboard tags, this poses a problem because it requires multiple rel=canonical tags to be placed on the one mobile page. I'm assuming this will either confuse the search engines, or they will choose to ignore the rel=canonical tag altogether.
Any ideas on how to approach this situation other than creating an equivalent mobile version of every desktop page or implementing a user agent detection redirect?
-
Hi JBlank,
My solution to this is to ask whether you actually should be using the switchboard tags on all your desktop pages?
Switchboard tags (which are basically a special version of rel=canonical for mobile), are meant to indicate to a search engine that the two pages contain (near-)duplicate content, but that it's ok because one is a mobile version of the other. If the content is not substantially the same, you don't need to have a switchboard tag (just like with the normal rel=canonical).
So my recommendation:
-
are any of your mobile pages direct or near-direct duplicates of your desktop pages? If so, use the switchboard tags for those desktop pages. You should also implement redirects in both directions based on user agent so that people land on the version most relevant to them. (And include the option to switch to the other version).
-
for the other desktop pages, which may relate to certain mobile pages but which are not at risk of being classed as duplicate content, you can simply ignore them, and allow mobile users to land on a non-mobile-friendly page; or you can redirect mobile visitors to the most relevant page on the mobile site (again, with the option to switch to the 'full site').
If you actually have multiple desktop pages which are so similar that they could both have a rel=alternate tag to the same mobile page, that's probably a separate issue.
If you're concerned about ranking for deep desktop content in mobile search, I'm afraid the most sustainable solution is to develop that content into a more mobile-friendly format.
Hope that 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
-
MOving from one page format to another
I have a page that I optimized for a valuable keyword (at least it is to me!) and it gets very good traffic. Problem is that the page needs to constantly updated with new "news" related to the topic area. I have developed a page-type that will have the same static content as the original page, but it will now automtaically index related content from the rest of the site so the "news" section stay fresh and up-to-date. I am now okay to do something like permanently redirect that page to the newly built one? I have also run the newly designed page through tests on Moz and it receives on receives an A-grade from the on-page optimization tool. I am just wanting to ensure I cover all bases, because I do not want to risk losing the top search result and all that valuable traffic.
Technical SEO | | kevgrand0 -
Goolge: Mobile friendliness is now a ranking factor on Mobile
John Mueller from Google has just confirmed: Google has just confirmed that mobile friendliness is now a ranking factor for people on smartphones. The date it goes live is 24th April 2015. There is a great presentation on the hangout - which will be available later to watch and once its available I will update with a link - but I would make sure your checking webmaster tools for any alerts / messages if you care about smartphone users. What do people recommend, regarding responsive vs mobile site vs dynamic serving. Is your site ready? What are you planning on doing since the update has been announced.
Technical SEO | | Andy-Halliday1 -
Effect of 302 redirects from empty parent page to sub page
A client's website has links to their service pages which then redirect (302 through a php "Location:" header) to that service's first sub-page. For example, our-services/service-x redirects to our-services/service-x/about-service-x I can only think this has been done because there is no actual content for the parent page and to maintain some kind of structure for navigation and URLs. Really there's no reason why the 'about-service-x' page can't be removed and its content transferred to the main 'service-x' page. Then the redirects can be removed also - it's not how a 302 should be used for a start. I'm just wondering what kind of effect this current redirection has on SEO, as I know 302s don't pass any link juice? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | driftingbass0 -
Does Google Still Pass Anchor Text for Multiple Links to the Same Page When Using a Hashtag? What About Indexation?
Both of these seem a little counter-intuitive to me so I want to make sure I'm on the same page. I'm wondering if I need to add "#s to my internal links when the page I'm linking to is already: a.) in the site's navigation b.) in the sidebar More specifically, in your experience...do the search engines only give credit to (or mostly give credit to) the anchor text used in the navigation and ignore the anchor text used in the body of the article? I've found (in here) a couple of folks mentioning that content after a hashtagged link isn't indexed. Just so I understand this... a.) if I were use a hashtag at the end of a link as the first link in the body of a page, this means that the rest of the article won't be indexed? b.) if I use a table of contents at the top of a page and link to places within the document, then only the areas of the page up to the table of contents will be indexed/crawled? Thanks ahead of time! I really appreciate the help.
Technical SEO | | Spencer_LuminInteractive0 -
Multiple Domains pointing to one IP
Hi we have some issues with Multiple domains pointing to one IP. is this considered duplicate content by Google? If so, what is the best thing can we do to avoid this? thanks
Technical SEO | | solution.advisor0 -
If a permanent redirect is supposed to transfer SEO from the old page to the new page, why has my domain authority been impacted?
For example, we redirected our old domain to a new one (leaving no duplicate content on the old domain) and saw a 40% decrease in domain authority. Isn't a permanent redirect supposed to transfer link authority to the place it is redirecting to? Did I do something wrong?
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Two different canonical tags on one page
Due to an error, some of my pages now have two canonical tags on them. One is correct and the other goes to a nonsense URL (404 page). I know I should ideally remove the incorrect ones, but it's a big manual job. Are they doing any harm? Can I just leave them there and let Google figure it out? The correct ones are higher up in the code. Will this make a difference? Any help appreciated.
Technical SEO | | ShearingsGroup0 -
Should I delete a page or remove links on a penalized page?
Hello All, If I have a internal page that has low quality links point to it or a penality. Can I just remove the page, and start over versus trying to remove the links? Over time wouldn't this page disapear along with the penalty on that page? Kinda like pruning a tree? Cutting off the junk limbs so other could grow stronger, or to start new fresh ones. Example: www.domain.com Penalized Internal Page: (Say this page is penalized due to keyword stuffing, and has low quality links pointing to it like blog comments, or profiles) www.domain.com/penalized-internal-page.com Would it be effective to just delete this page (www.domain.com/penalized-internal-page.com) and start over with a new page. New Internal Page: www.domain.com/new-internal-page.com I would of course lose any good links point to that page, but it might be easier then trying to remove old back links. Thoughts? Thanks! Pete
Technical SEO | | Juratovic0