You guys are fast I was going to answer this and had to do some other things but let me weigh in on couple things.
as you said
“We are in a predicament of how to properly use the canonical and alternate rel tags**. Currently we have a canonical on mobile and alternate on desktop, both of which have the same URL because both mobile and desktop use the same as explained in the first paragraph.”**
so what you’re saying is that you have a dynamic site so you don’t need to add “alternate"media” tags to the site.
https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/dynamic-serving
As it is not immediately apparent in this setup that the site alters the HTML for mobile user agents (the mobile content is "hidden" when crawled with a desktop user agent), it’s recommend that the server send a hint to request that Googlebot for smartphones also crawl the page, and thus discover the mobile content. This hint is implemented using the Vary HTTP header.
**you don’t need this **
Annotations in the HTML
On the desktop page (http://www.example.com/page-1), add the following annotation:
<code dir="ltr"><linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)"<br="">href="http://m.example.com/page-1"></linkrel="alternate"media="only></code>
On the mobile page (http://m.example.com/page-1), the required annotation should be:
<code dir="ltr"><linkrel="canonical"href="http: www.example.com="" page-1"=""></linkrel="canonical"href="http:></code>
This rel="canonical" tag on the mobile URL pointing to the desktop page is required.
Annotations in sitemaps
We support including the rel="alternate"annotation for the desktop pages in sitemaps like this:
<code dir="ltr"><urlsetxmlns="http: www.sitemaps.org="" schemas="" sitemap="" 0.9"<br="">xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/page-1/</loc>
<xhtml:linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)"<br="">href="http://m.example.com/page-1"/></xhtml:linkrel="alternate"media="only></url></urlsetxmlns="http:></code>
The required rel="canonical" tag on the mobile URL should still be added to the mobile page's HTML.
**to be sure **
Are you willing to share your domain with us? Or one domain?
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We're talking about multiple websites that all have the identical site structure or at least mobile and desktop site structure?
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Your server is making the change for you?
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Would you be kind enough to install this plug-in on chrome in order for you to show a couple examples of the canonical and the URL?
In addition, would you be kind enough to run your site through the two tools here ( 100% free and very easy to use)
If you would not mind doing this and sending screenshots it would mean a lot to us and getting your canonical's straightened out.
screenshots https://snag.gy/ then upload to http://imgur.com/
everything is on the same server I'm assuming?
Of the three below how would you categorize your site?
- https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls
- https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/dynamic-serving
- https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/responsive-design
Respectfully,
Tom