Mobile SEO best practices : Should my mobile website be located at m.domain.com or domain.com/mobile?
-
I'd like to know if there's any difference between using m.domain.com/pages or domain.com/mobile/pages for a mobile website? Which one is better? Why? Does Google treat the two differently? As you can see, I'm new to this! This is my first time working on a mobile website, so any links/resources would be highly appreciated. Thanks!
-
As Collin already states: this is just part of the regular old discussion about 1) subdirectory, 2) subdomain or 3) different domain. So SEO wise you should think about that. But also, you should think about how your desktop version of the website related to the (tablet?) mobile version of the website. There's multiple approaches:
- Responsive design (all on the same domain, using the same URL's)
- Separate mobile website and desktop website
- Mobile website on subdomain (m.blaa.com)
- Mobile website on separate domain
In order to help you choose, see below:
Responsive design vs. mobile website
For regular websites using responsive design is a good solution. Except for the case in which the HTML and assets are quite large for a mobile device to load. In that case I always prefer to use a mobile version of the website on a subdomain.
I believe this is the best solution for high traffic websites which need to show quite some content per page.
-
I think it is better to use media queries and JavaScript on the same domain rather than using a subdomain. It makes efforts with SEO, site maintenance, content updates etc etc so much more efficient.
-
Even with proper rel=canonicals in place, there's still an issue of having multiple urls and having links and social signals go to two different urls with the same content rather than just one url.
I'd pick a single URL for all content. Mobile visitors should received optimized pages via responsive or adaptive design. I do it via user-agent detection, and I serve optimized versions to either desktops, tablets or phones using the 'same url'.
-
In short, they each have their own benefits
- m.domain.com lives in it's own world and is easier to make sweeping changes to and such
- domain.com/mobile leverages the existing strength of your domain
If you'd like to read more on it, here's an article that explains it a little more in depth... I won't bother just re-stating it all here.
http://plussearchmarketing.com/search/2012/03/mobile-urls-for-seo/
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
-
How to Reduce the spam score of the website?
Hello, My Website Spam Score is 60. how can I reduce the spam score of the website. plz give me suggestion
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jyhkgkkkkkhkjgj0 -
Steps to Improve Page Rank and Domain Authority
Hi If the quality of web pages is very good I believe rankings should reflect this. My domain is at least 3 years old.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOguy1
What steps would you recommend short term and long term in terms of how to improve page rank and domain authority? Thanks.0 -
Meta tags for international domains
Hi Mozers I have 3 top level domains co.nz com.au and com each meta tag for the home page is unique for each country and I have tried to figure this out for the last 3 months, but unfortunately I can't seem to pin point why all 3 meta tags are showing up exactly the same. It seems all meta tags are showing up for the co.nz domain. In the attachments you can see all urls are showing up correctly for each country specific domain, however the meta tag description defaults to the NZ Any help around this would be much appreciated! Thanks all
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Why would my domain authority drop 2 points ?and how can i bring my domain authority back up?'.
why would my domain authority drop 2 points ?and how can i bring my domain authority back up?'.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | aronwp0 -
Is my SEO consultant doing blackhat tactic?
Hi, Can someone tell me what my SEO consultant is doing? I have engaged a SEO company in Singapore for my site: Http://www.rollerblinds.com.sg The thing is for the 1st 2 months, it is ranking well but for the next 4 months it is out of google. I noticed my links are on some strange article site. Is he doing blackhat tactic, I have been paying monthly for many months now with no result. Shall I continue to pay and how can I recover?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | chanel270 -
competitor sites link to a considerable amount of irrelevant sites/nonsense sites that seem to score high with regard to domain authority
According to my recent SEOmoz links analysis, my competitor sites link to a considerable amount of irrelevant sites/nonsense sites that seem to score high with regard to domain authority... e.g. wedding site linking to a transportation attorney's website. Aother competitor site has an overall of 2 million links, most of which are seemingly questionable index sites or forums to which registration is unattainable. I recently created a 301 redirect, and my external links have yet to be updated to my new domain name in SEOmoz. Yet, by comparing my previous domain authority rank with those of the said competitor sites, the “delta” is relatively marginal. The SEOmoz rank is 21 whereas the SEOmoz ranks of two competitor sites 30 and 33 respectively. The problem is, however, is to secure a good SERP for the most relevant terms with Google… My Google pagerank was “3” prior to the 301 redirect. I worked quite intensively so as to receive a pagerank only to discover that it had no affect at all on the SERP. Therefore, I took a calculated risk in changing to a domain name that translates from non-latin characters, as the site age is marginal, and my educated guess is that the PR should rebound within 4 weeks, however, I would like to know as to whether there is a way to transfer the pagerank to the new domain… Does anyone have any insight as to how to go about and handling this issue?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eranariel0 -
Link farming and related websites
In my niche I have about 17 sites I have created. They all provide unique content, html, and all have a variety of uses that differ from each other mostly, some repetition but not really. All these sites are related to the same niche. I do link to each other in my sites. I don't go crazy and link every site to every other site or span links on footers. I somewhere in the content link here to there. Not even consistent, just linking to related pages from others. I was wondering if this is something I need to be careful about or could I get hit with link farming?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | cbielich0 -
So what's up with UpDowner.com?
I've noticed these guys in link profiles for several sites I manage. They'll usually show up around 1,000-10,000 times in the backlink profile. From what I can tell they index websites, build up keyword relationships, and then when you search for something on their site (e.g. poker) they'll present a list of related sites with stats about them. The stats seem to be yanked straight from Alexa. Where the backlink comes from is that every time 'your' site shows up for a search result they'll put a little iframe that contains your site. This means if your site's name/keywords are pretty broad, you could be showing up thousands and tens of thousands of times as being linked from these guys on their pages that Google indexes. And Google indexes, boy do they ever. At the height, they had over 53 million pages indexed. That has apparently shrunk now to around 25 million. I believe their strategy is to generate a crap-load of automated content in the hopes they can cash in on obscure long tails. So my questions for you guys are: Are you seeing them in your backlinks too? Should I block their spider/referrers? What is their deal man?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | icecarats0