How do you check mobile-friendliness when you have a separate mobile site?
-
One of our clients has a separate mobile site, and we've setup the rel="alternate" on the main site homepage, but https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ still fails the site (it checks the main site, instead of the mobile site) when we put in the main site URL. Is there any way to check that we've got everything setup correctly? (We have a lot of experience with mobile responsive sites, but not so much with separate URLs.)
-
Great - glad it was sorted out!
-Dan
-
Got this issue fixed. The issue was that robots.txt was blocking the Javascript file that does the redirect, so Google couldn't see the redirect.
-
Hi Adam
I have not personally used one, but this particular search looks like it uncovers some that are available. "Simple Mobile Redirect" has the best reviews. Also, this is a good general guide from Google on user agent detection / HTTP redirects.
-
To handle the redirect to the mobile site. Sounds like the JavaScript this client had in place isn't working correctly.
-
Hi Adam
What are you looking for a WP plugin to do specifically?
-
Adam,
Did the same check with Firefox (with a Mobile user agent) & still get the desktop version. Don't think the problem is with the redirect but with the detection.
I guess if you search for User Agent sniffer Wordpress you should be able to find some tools. Afraid I can't help you with that (this is the point where I handle it over to the technical department myself...)
Dirk
-
You would get a 200 response...the redirect is JavaScript, not server side. Maybe we should change that? Do you have a WP plugin you recommend?
-
^ Adam, there you go! Great job, Dirk!
-
The redirect was setup by a previous vendor, but I've not noticed any issues with them.
-
I just tested the url on web-sniffer.net with mobile user agent - it seems that the tool you use to detect if the user agent is a mobile one doesn't work. I get a normal 200 status (from the desktop site) - idem like Patrick
rgds,
Dirk
-
Hi Adam
Are you sure your redirects are set up properly? I tested this on my phone and it seemed a little wonky. Are those put in place correctly?
-
Thanks. The Google doc is what we were using as our guide to set up the code on the homepage. So you're saying that the main site homepage should pass the mobile friendly test tool if we have it set up right? URL is arcticair4me.com
-
NM the URL is arcticair4me.com
-
Yeh, that's the doc we followed in setting up the code on the homepage. I'll PM you the URL.
-
The normal way to check is like you did - if it fails it implies something is wrong with the way you set it up. Check the link in Patrick's answer - the doc of Google is quite detailed how to set it up properly.
rgds
Dirk
-
Hi there
Do you have an example URL we can check? Did you only do this on the homepage and no other internal pages?
Also, did you set up your redirects properly? Check out this resource from Google.
I would read that through that and make sure your code lines up correctly.
Let me know - would love to help! Good luck!
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
-
My site Metrics are not as per they should
Hi, I am regularly making links on my site to improve its metrics but i am confused how other people fastly improve their DA/PA and my DA/PA is not improving with that site. The same happened with spam score. It has been a month i disavow my links having spam score but instead of decrease in it, my spam score increased. Please advice. Is there any special way to use that help moz crawler to check site and update accordingly? Please help
Technical SEO | | AzadSeo37310 -
Linking shallow sites to flagship sites
We have hundreds of domains that we are either doing nothing with, or they are very shallow. We do not have the time to build enough quality content on them since they are ancillary to our flagship sites that are already in need of attention and good content. My question is...should we redirect them to the flagship site? If yes, is it ok to do this from root domain to root domain or should we link the root domain to a matching/similar page (gymfranchises.com to http://www.franchisesolutions.com/health_services_franchise_opportunities.cfm)? Or should we do something different altogether? Since we have many to redirect (if this is the route we go), should we redirect gradually?
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions0 -
Dev Site Was Indexed By Google
Two of our dev sites(subdomains) were indexed by Google. They have since been made private once we found the problem. Should we take another step to remove the subdomain through robots.txt or just let it ride out? From what I understand, to remove the subdomain from Google we would verify the subdomain on GWT, then give the subdomain it's own robots.txt and disallow everything. Any advice is welcome, I just wanted to discuss this before making a decision.
Technical SEO | | ntsupply0 -
I noticed all my SEOed sites are getting attacked constantly by viruses. I do wordpress sites. Does anyone have a good recommendation to protect my clients sites? thanks
We have tried all different kinds of security plugins but none seem to work long term.
Technical SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Google having trouble accessing my site
Hi google is having problem accessing my site. each day it is bringing up access denied errors and when i have checked what this means i have the following Access denied errors In general, Google discovers content by following links from one page to another. To crawl a page, Googlebot must be able to access it. If you’re seeing unexpected Access Denied errors, it may be for the following reasons: Googlebot couldn’t access a URL on your site because your site requires users to log in to view all or some of your content. (Tip: You can get around this by removing this requirement for user-agent Googlebot.) Your robots.txt file is blocking Google from accessing your whole site or individual URLs or directories. Test that your robots.txt is working as expected. The Test robots.txt tool lets you see exactly how Googlebot will interpret the contents of your robots.txt file. The Google user-agent is Googlebot. (How to verify that a user-agent really is Googlebot.) The Fetch as Google tool helps you understand exactly how your site appears to Googlebot. This can be very useful when troubleshooting problems with your site's content or discoverability in search results. Your server requires users to authenticate using a proxy, or your hosting provider may be blocking Google from accessing your site. Now i have contacted my hosting company who said there is not a problem but said to read the following page http://www.tmdhosting.com/kb/technical-questions/other/robots-txt-file-to-improve-the-way-search-bots-crawl/ i have read it and as far as i can see i have my file set up right which is listed below. they said if i still have problems then i need to contact google. can anyone please give me advice on what to do. the errors are responce code 403 User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /xmlrpc/0 -
Keyword targeting by page, site, or both?
Hi, We recently discovered that a product we sell has a misnomer, and that a ton of people take to Google and use variations of that misnomer while trying to find us. Unfortunately we don't rank in Google for this keyword, and its costing us thousands in lost sales. I've been slowly building the misnomer into the content of our site in hopes that the spiders will pick up on it. It has started to work in the last couple weeks, but we're nowhere near the top (and we are #1 and #2 for most of our other prime keywords.) The site which sells the product is specialized, and only sells this specific product (in different models, but they're all the same product essentially.) With that in mind, I'm trying to figure out the best way to attack a new keyword. I know that normally you would dedicate a specific page (in an eCommerce store probably that product's own page) to employ your SEO tactics. However, because this site specializes in this product and offers different models and information about it I'm confused about the best approach. Does Google take into consideration the entire site a s whole, or are the pages within my site competing against each other for rank?
Technical SEO | | ninjaprecision0 -
Multiple Domains for One Site
We are building a site for a new miniature golf course. They have a long name, which they don't want me to mention, but it's equivalent to a name like Golden State Golf and Putt. They also have a restaurant with its own name and brand that will be a part of the mini golf course and its website, much how Hotel websites have their restaurants on their sites. Before becoming our client they purchased golfandputt.com and want to go with this domain for simplicity sake. In addition to this domain name they purchased 7 others that contain the bussiness' full name in some way, such as: goldenstategolfandputt.com goldenstategolfandputt.net, goldenstategolf-guitar.com etc., As well as: 3 variations of the golfandputt.com domain 3 variations of the restaurants name They wish to have all of these redirect to the main website or the restaurant page to "help with SEO," as they told me. From what I have researched on SEOmoz it seems better to simply optimize the website for Golden State Golf and Putt and the restaurant page for the restaurant's name. Additionally, I'm worried that redirecting the domains to the site will actually hurt them in rankings. If someone can shed some light on what the best practices for this sort of situation are I'd be much appreciative. Apologies in advance for the lengthy explanation but its a bit of a unique situation.
Technical SEO | | TVI0 -
Site revision
our site has complete redesign including site architecture, page url and page content (except domain). It looks like a new site. The old site has been indexed about thirty thousand results by google. now what should i do first?
Technical SEO | | jallenyang0