Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Separate .mobi site or make .com site mobile friendly?
-
Our website now has enough mobile traffic to justify going mobile friendly, which it is not at this time.
I am in favor of making a separate .mobi site designed specifically for mobile phones and smart phones for several reasons. It is cheaper, faster, and easier to accomplish. I think our mobile users will have a good experience though obviously not as much info as our full site.
I would use ourdomain.mobi with link or a redirect for mobile users from from the main site.
My top three choices for implementing that are
- http://allwebcodesign.com/setup/mobi-templates.htm#detailsarea
Template that can be viewed by mobile or desktop. - http://www.onbile.com/
- http://www.networksolutions.com/mobile-website/index.jsp
Does this seem like a good solution?
- http://allwebcodesign.com/setup/mobi-templates.htm#detailsarea
-
You're welcome!
I think having a temporary option is great if there's enough mobile traffic coming to your website that you know it's vital for your customers. You can always put a "full, un-optimized for mobile" site link to allow mobile users to get out of the mobile interface if they can't find what they're looking for in the temporary mobile site.
-
Thank you!
What do you think about using a .mobi site with the auto-redirect as a temporary solution until we can optimize the .com for mobile users? It may be several months before we can roll that out. I really want to keep the mobile users coming to our site.
-
I'm a fan of just developing your .com to fit mobile sites.
My two reasons are:
1. If the user is on their phone & typing in the URL, they probably are going to do .com instead of .mobi. And if they're using a search engine, they may not find the .mobi. Unless, of course, you are doing some kind of autoredirect that detects when people are on mobile devices and then sends them to the .mobi site.
2. From a content management perspective, I like the simplicity of only having one site to update. I suppose this really depends on how much content you have on your site, how often you update, and how your back-end works. I'd look at how much time and effort it takes to update your current content, consider how much of it you'd want on the .mobi & how often you'd be updating that, and factor that into your decision if you're optimizing the .com or going with a .mobi. For the sites I work on, the issue of content really pushed me into deciding to optimize the .com.
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 I safely asume that links between subsites on a subdirectories based multisite will be treated as internal links within a single site by Google?
I am building a multisite network based in subdirectories (of the mainsite.com/site1 kind) where the main site is like a company site, and subsites are focused on brands or projects of that company. There will be links back and forth from the main site and the subsites, as if subsites were just categories or pages within the main site (they are hosted in subfolders of the main domain, after all). Now, Google's John Mueller has said: <<as far="" as="" their="" url="" structure="" is concerned,="" subdirectories="" are="" no="" different="" from="" pages="" and="" subpages="" on="" your="" main="" site.="" google="" will="" do="" its="" best="" to="" identify="" where="" sites="" separate="" using="" but="" the="" is="" same="" for="" a="" single="" site,="" you="" should="" assume="" that="" seo="" purposes,="" network="" be="" treated="" one="">></as> This sounds fine to me, except for the part "Google will do its best to identify where sites are separate", because then, if Google establishes that my multisite structure is actually a collection of different sites, links between subsites and mainsite would be considered backlinks between my own sites, which could be therefore considered a link wheel, that is, a kind of linking structure Google doesn't like. How can I make sure that Google understand my multisite as a unique site? P.S. - The reason I chose this multisite structure, instead of hosting brands in categories of the main site, is that if I use the subdirectories based multisite feature I will be able to map a TLD domain to any of my brands (subsites) whenever I'd choose to give that brand a more distinct profile, as if it really was a different website.
Web Design | | PabloCulebras0 -
Best SEO-friendly CMS platform?
I have been tasked with rebuilding a small e-commerce website using a CMS, but I'm not sure which one has the most SEO compatibility. One SEO company recommended Squarespace. Another warned me against Squarespace because of its limited SEO features and instead recommended Wordpress with the WooCommerce toolkit. I've also heard Drupal and Joomla mentioned. Are certain CMS platforms more SEO-friendly? If so, what are the best ones that can also handle e-commerce? Thanks!
Web Design | | businessimagesolutions1 -
Incorporating Spanish Page/Site
We bought an exact match domain (in Spanish) to incorporate with regular website for a particular keyword. This is our first attempt at this, and while we do have Spanish speaking staff that will translate/create a nice, quality page, we're not going to redo everything in Spanish page. Any advice on how to implement this? Do I need to create a whole other website in Spanish? Will that be duplicate content if I do? Can I just set it up to show the first page in Spanish, but if they click on anything else it redirects to our site? I'm pretty clueless on this, so if anything I've suggested is off-the-wall or a violation, I'm really just spit-balling, trying to figure out how to implement this. Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
How to make sure category pages rank higher than product pages?
Hi, This question is E-Commerce related. We have product categories dividing products by color. Let's say we have the category 'blue toy cars' and a product called 'blue toy car racer', both of these could rank for the keyword 'blue toy car'. How do we make sure the category 'blue toy cars' ranks above the product 'blue toy car racer'? Or is the category page automatically ranked higher because of the higher page authority of that page? Alex
Web Design | | WebmasterAlex0 -
What's the point of an EU site?
Buongiorno from 18 degrees C Wetherby UK 🙂 On this site http://www.milwaukeetool.eu/ the client wants to hold on to the EU site despite there being multiple standalone country sittes e.g. http://www.milwaukeetool.fr & http://www.milwaukeetool.co.uk Why would you ever need an EU site? I mean who ever searches for an EU site? If the client holds on to the eu site despite my position it's a waiste of time from a search perspective is the folowing the best appeasment? When a user enters the eu url or redirects to country the detected, eg I'm in Paris I enter www.milwaukeetool.eu it redirects to http://www.milwaukeetool.fr. My felling this would be the most pragmatic thing to do? Any ideas please,
Web Design | | Nightwing
Cioa,
David0 -
How will it affect my site if i link to a site with adult content?
We are currently working on creating 2 sites for a company, one with no adult content, one with adult content. Will it affect the non adult content site if i link to the other one in terms of Google and being blocked by some internet providers.
Web Design | | MattWheatcroft0 -
Are iPads and other tablets considered mobile devices?
A colleague and I were discussing whether or not iPads should be considered mobile devices. Obviously, developing for a mobile phone is different than developing for an iPad so we're trying to determine if mobile is the correct umbrella to put both of these devices under.
Web Design | | TheOceanAgency2 -
Site-wide footer links or single "website credits" page?
I see that you have already answered this question before back in 2007 (http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/2163), but wanted to ask your current opinion on the same question: Should I add a site-wide footer link to my client websites pointing to my website, or should I create a "website credits" page on my clients site, add this to the footer and then link from within this page out to my website?
Web Design | | eseyo0