Where to point canonical for m-dot site in the wake of Mobile-First Indexing
-
My client currently use an m-dot URL for their mobile site and while conducting a technical audit for their web properties, we have noticed that their desktop is using a self-referencing rel="canonical" while their mobile m-dot has no rel="canonical" tags. While our initial recommendation is to point the mobile m-dot point to the desktop using a rel="canonical" and the desktop point to the mobile using a rel="alternative," there have been hesitations about mobile first indexing and canonical tags. If Google will use the m-dot for indexing purposes moving forward, is the progressive recommendation to have the desktop point to the m-dot using a rel="canonical" and the m-dot point to the desktop using a rel="alternative" or to maintain the initially stated recommendation?
-
Hey Derek,
I would stick with the recommendation from Google to have desktop version rel alternate point to the mobile version and mobile version point to the desktop version using the canonical tag. Also, take a look at this documentation from Google:
https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-first-indexing#best-practices
The last line says "Make sure you have the correct rel=canonical and rel=alternate link elements between your mobile and desktop versions." Which mean they suggest you follow their guidelines which you can find on:
https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls
I don't really think it's a good idea to risk the site by doing something opposite to the guidelines.
Personally, I would consider updating to a responsive website because it's easier to manage, cost less in long run, less prone to error, able to get the most out of your SEO effort and Responsive design is Google’s recommended design pattern:
https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/#choose_your_mobile_configuration
I hope this answered your question.
Cheers,
Joseph Yap
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
-
Can anyone help me diagnose an indexing/sitemap issue on a large e-commerce site?
Hey guys. Wondering if someone can help diagnose a problem for me. Here's our site: https://www.flagandbanner.com/ We have a fairly large e-commerce site--roughly 23,000 urls according to crawls using both Moz and Screaming Frog. I have created an XML sitemap (using SF) and uploading to Webmaster Tools. WMT is only showing about 2,500 urls indexed. Further, WMT is showing that Google is indexing only about 1/2 (approx. 11,000) of the urls. Finally (to add even more confusion), when doing a site search on Google (site:) it's only showing about 5,400 urls found. The numbers are all over the place! Here's the robots.txt file: User-agent: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webrocket
Allow: /
Disallow: /aspnet_client/
Disallow: /httperrors/
Disallow: /HTTPErrors/
Disallow: /temp/
Disallow: /test/ Disallow: /i_i_email_friend_request
Disallow: /i_i_narrow_your_search
Disallow: /shopping_cart
Disallow: /add_product_to_favorites
Disallow: /email_friend_request
Disallow: /searchformaction
Disallow: /search_keyword
Disallow: /page=
Disallow: /hid=
Disallow: /fab/* Sitemap: https://www.flagandbanner.com/images/sitemap.xml Anyone have any thoughts as to what our problems are?? Mike0 -
Different URL structure Desktop VS Mobile Regarding SEO when building a new seperate mobile site
Hi I have a old OScommerce webshop, that i will keep for now, but i have build a complete new mobile site for mobile devices, but it has another url structure. Can i launch this site without any problems when its Google Mobile Search Engine that index the mobile site, and then just make the neccesary rel alternate tags for the desktop site for the product pages and main categories that i can. There will be some differences in the urls i cant make a alternate for.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | noerdar0 -
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 -
Killing 404 errors on our site in Google's index
Having moved a site across to Magento, obviously re-directs were a large part of that, ensuring all the old products and categories linked up correctly with the new site structure. However, we came up against an issue where we needed to add, delete, then re-add products. This, coupled with a misunderstanding of the csv upload processing, meant that although the old urls redirected, some of the new Magento urls changed and then didn't redirect: For Example: mysite/product would get deleted re-added and become: mysite/product-1324 We now know what we did wrong to ensure it doesn't continue to happen if we weret o delete and re-add a product, but Google contains all these old URLs in its index which has caused people to search for products on Google, click through, then land on the 404 page - far from ideal. We kind of assumed, with continual updating of sitemaps and time, that Google would realise and update the URL accordingly. But this hasn't happened - we are still getting plenty of 404 errors on certain product searches (These aren't appearing in SEOmoz, there are no links to the old URL on the site, only Google, as the index contains the old URL). Aside from going through and finding the products affected (no easy task), and setting up redirects for each one, is there any way we can tell Google 'These URLs are no longer a thing, forget them and move on, let's make a fresh start and Happy New Year'?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seanmccauley0 -
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 -
What's the best way to manage content that is shared on two sites and keep both sites in search results?
I manage two sites that share some content. Currently we do not use a cross-domain canonical URL and allow both sites to be fully indexed. For business reasons, we want both sites to appear in results and need both to accumulate PR and other SEO/Social metrics. How can I manage the threat of duplicate content and still make sure business needs are met?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BostonWright0 -
Can a Hosting provider that also hosts adult content sites negatively affect our SEO rankings on a non-adult site hosted on same platform?
We're considering moving a site to a host that also offers hosting for adult websites. Can this have a negative affect on SEO, if our hosting company is in any way associated with adult websites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grapevinemktg0 -
Push for site-wide https, but all pages in index are http. Should I fight the tide?
Hi there, First Q&A question 🙂 So I understand the problems caused by having a few secure pages on a site. A few links to the https version a page and you have duplicate content issues. While there are several posts here at SEOmoz that talk about the different ways of dealing with this issue with respect to secure pages, the majority of this content assumes that the goal of the SEO is to make sure no duplicate https pages end up in the index. The posts also suggest that https should only used on log in pages, contact forms, shopping carts, etc." That's the root of my problem. I'm facing the prospect of switching to https across an entire site. In the light of other https related content I've read, this might seem unecessary or overkill, but there's a vaild reason behind it. I work for a certificate authority. A company that issues SSL certificates, the cryptographic files that make the https protocol work. So there's an obvious need our site to "appear" protected, even if no sensitive data is being moved through the pages. The stronger push, however, stems from our membership of the Online Trust Alliance. https://otalliance.org/ Essentially, in the parts of the internet that deal with SSL and security, there's a push for all sites to utilize HSTS Headers and force sitewide https. Paypal and Bank of America are leading the way in this intiative, and other large retailers/banks/etc. will no doubt follow suit. Regardless of what you feel about all that, the reality is that we're looking at future that involves more privacy protection, more SSL, and more https. The bottom line for me is; I have a site of ~800 pages that I will need to switch to https. I'm finding it difficult to map the tips and tricks for keeping the odd pesky https page out of the index, to what amounts to a sitewide migratiion. So, here are a few general questions. What are the major considerations for such a switch? Are there any less obvious pitfalls lurking? Should I even consider trying to maintain an index of http pages, or should I start work on replacing (or have googlebot replace) the old pages with https versions? Is that something that can be done with canonicalization? or would something at the server level be necessary? How is that going to affect my page authority in general? What obvious questions am I not asking? Sorry to be so longwinded, but this is a tricky one for me, and I want to be sure I'm giving as much pertinent information as possible. Any input will be very much appreciated. Thanks, Dennis
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dennis.globalsign0