Mobile & desktop pages
-
I have a mobile site (m.example.com) and a desktop site (example.com). I want search engines to know that for every desktop page there is a mobile equivalent. To do this I insert a rel=alternate on the desktop pages to the mobile equivalent. On the mobile pages I insert a rel=canonical to it's equivalent desktop page. So far so good BUT:
Almost every desktop page has 4 or 5 copies (duplicate content). I get rid of this issue by using the rel=canonical to the source page. Still no problem here.
But what happens if I insert a rel=alternate to the mobile equivalent on every copy of the source page? I know it sounds stupid but the system doesn't allow me to insert a rel=alternate on just one page. It's all or nothing!
My question:
Does Google ignore the rel=alternate on the duplicate pages but keeps understanding the link between the desktop source page & mobile page ? Or should I avoid this scenario?
Many Thanks
Pieter
-
I would love to see any of it you are willing to share. I am not saying in any way it is an absolute (what is in SEO?), I just worry over not indexing a page for mobile.
Best
-
We did an in-depth study last year to see if setting the mobile pages to "no-index" had any effect. This was done on one of our biggest sites. What we found is that if a site ranks high in desktop results, Google will display the same results in mobile, even if location targeting is turned on in the mobile device.
The only thing that skewed the results is if something relevant was within a few miles, and even then it was few and far between that it showed a difference. We even tried doing the same searches with having our location set to a completely different town or city, and got the same results.
Test was conducted using hotspots, wifi, 4g, 3g and multiple devices so we were not using the same IP. I understand what you are saying, I just don't think it has as large of an impact as people think.
-
David, what i'm trying to reach is this:
On the desktop page I add this between my
<linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)" href="http://m.example.com/page-1"></linkrel="alternate"media="only>
On the mobile page I add this between my
<link< span="">rel="canonical"href="http://www.example.com/page-1"></link<>
In this way i'm saying to search engines that for this desktop URL an alternate mobile URL is available. The desktop URL is the one that will get in to the search results ( based on the canonical on the mobile URL) and users will be served the desktop or mobile page depending on the device they're using ("media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)". In this way duplicate issues are countered.
Besides this I have multiple copies of the my desktop URL. Thes copies get the right canonical to the source page. But when I want to add the rel=alternate to my source, they also are added to my copies of the desktop URL. (The system in which i'm working doesn't allow me to do otherwise)
I made a scheme of this (see image). I'm concerned that the rel=alternate on the desktop's copy URL's may cause problems to achieve the above.
@Robert: Thanks for the input, clear to me. I will test it!
-
David,
I would not suggest this as there are separate mobile search results. I think you are taking a risk with no-indexing your mobile pages. You are better served to use rel=alternate IMO.
Best, -
We use the mobile pages for users only, and set them to "no-index". There is no reason for increased SEO (that I am aware of) to have both a m. and a www. version of a page indexed in Google. If you have a desktop page full of good conetnt, and it is in your sitemap, Google will find it. What you want to do is have the server detect the device the user is accessing the site from, and display the mobile or tablet version. IMO this is to help the user to navigate your site easier, not to get a seo boost by having more pages or showing Google you have mobile-specific pages.
Also, add this to your robots.txt file:
User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile
Allow: /
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Allow: / -
I put this down on paper and cannot see a way it is harmful. I am assuming there is more than one source page topic:
Site is Bikes, categories are wheels, handlebars, chains.
Pages are Bikes/wheels/red, blue, green
Bike/wheel/red = one source page, Bike/wheel/blue = one source page, etc. EDIT - each of these pages has multiple versions
If so, I would change half the source pages and just watch for a week. (Fetch as Google after changing - immediately so you have likelihood of quick reindex)
If you see nothing negative, implement rel=alt for all the other wheels
Does that seem clear?
-
Thanks a lot for the answer! To answer yours; If we want to insert a rel=alternate (or any tag) on the source page it's automatically added in it's copies. We can work around it but asks a lot of work and budget. Don't ask me why/how or the details, the only thing I know for sure is that it wasn't build for SEO ;).
Pieter
-
Humix,
I do not believe it would cause you a problem to have it on every copy of the source page; When you say the "system" won't allow you to place on just main source page, what do you mean?
Robert
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
-
Page Juice not moving???
Moved URL's from ldnwicklesscandles.com to ldnwicklesscandles.co.uk because I wanted to rank better for UK where I'm located and thought also the .co.uk for my competitors may have been giving them the advantage. Use Squarespace 7 (transferred over from SS5)----they told me to set primary domain to .co.uk and I've done it. I've also done a 301 redirect and done a change of address in webmaster tools although I'm not sure if all of this is needed? Squarespace seem to think just setting the primary domain is enough. My question is its been a couple of weeks, I've resubmited to Google webmaster to try to speed things up, the new URL is appearing in Google but none of my Page Juice seems to be transferring yet? How long will it take? I know not all the juice will move over but my PA/DA is non existent now and I have no idea if I'm just being impatient or I've done something wrong here. Not a Pro, Just a small biz owner here so forgive me if this has been asked before.
Technical SEO | | ldnwickless0 -
Can up a page
I do my best to optimize the on-page parameters for my page www.lkeria.com/AADL-logement-Algerie.php for the kw "aadl" but i can't understand what Ii'm doing wrong (i desapear 2 mounths ago). The page is optimize (title, description, h1, h2 etc.) few links with different ancers, but google put a spamy site www[dot]aadl[dot]biz in top 3 ratheer my page. Can you give me some advice to fix this issue? What I am doing wrong? Tanks in advance
Technical SEO | | lkeria0 -
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 -
Page not cached
Hi there, we uploaded a page but unfortunately didn't realise it had noindex,nofollow in the meta tags. Google had cached it then decached it (i guess thats possible) it seems? now it will not cache even though the correct meta tags have been put in and we have sent links to it internally and externally. Anyone know why this page isn't being cached, the internal link to it is on the homepage and that gets cached almost every day. I even submitted it to webmaster tools to index.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Two Domains for the Same Page
We are creating a website for a client that will have hundreds of geographically driven landing pages. These pages will all have a similar domain structure. For example www.domain.com/georgia-atlanta-fastfood-121 We want the domain to be SEO friendly, however it also needs to be print friendly for a business card. (ex www.domain.com/121) The client has requested that we have two domains for each page. One for the Search Engines and then another shorter one for print/advertising purposes. If we do that will search engines the site for duplicate content? I really appreciate any recommendations. Thanks! Anna
Technical SEO | | TracSoft0 -
Top pages give " page not found"
A lot of my top pages point to images in a gallery on my site. When I click on the url under the name of the jpg file I get an error page not found. For instance this link: http://www.fastingfotografie.nl/architectuur-landschap/single-gallery/10162327 Is this a problem? Thanks. Thomas. JkLej.png
Technical SEO | | thomasfasting0 -
Getting More Pages Indexed
We have a large E-commerce site (magento based) and have submitted sitemap files for several million pages within Webmaster tools. The number of indexed pages seems to fluctuate, but currently there is less than 300,000 pages indexed out of 4 million submitted. How can we get the number of indexed pages to be higher? Changing the settings on the crawl rate and resubmitting site maps doesn't seem to have an effect on the number of pages indexed. Am I correct in assuming that most individual product pages just don't carry enough link juice to be considered important enough yet by Google to be indexed? Let me know if there are any suggestions or tips for getting more pages indexed. syGtx.png
Technical SEO | | Mattchstick0 -
Mobile site ranking in desktop searches
A robots.txt file is properly implemented on the mobile site to block Googlebot from crawling, yet, when running a site: query for the site in google, it still returns over 104,000 pages from the mobile site in the index. Why could this be happening?
Technical SEO | | craigsmith3330