Mobile Site & SEO
-
If i create a mobile site for a client will google crawl that site for mobile results or will it effect my rankings.
My guess is no, just want to make sure.
Obviously code will be different.
-
I just saw a huge jump for rank on a keyword and went to the SERPs to verify it and found it to be a mobile version of the page (it does not look pretty).
From what I read, I should put rel=canonical tags on the mobile site's pages that indicate the main website's pages to be the canonical version. Yes?
-
Hi Cyrus, I hit the same road block and I was wondering if you still stick to your comment above for 2013.
-
Google will crawl a mobile site as long as it has a good site architecture and contains content that is relevant to what mobile users are searching for. It is important that when creating a mobile site to include a mobile sitemap as this will tell Google that you are targeting mobile users and index the websites according to the various handsets.
The key points to a mobile site are:
Relevant Pages Titles and Descriptions
Appropriate keywords in content Clean HTML coding -
Thanks Bryson - appreciate your insight - and am always happy to get your input on mobile SEO.
-
Popular tactic, but usually makes a site less visible to mobile searchers, not more. Wrote in Search Engine Land last year about how disallowing their mobile site made Home Depot nearly impossible to find in search here: http://searchengineland.com/why-mobile-friendly-is-not-mobile-seo-66192
Better to properly redirect user agents, including Googlebot mobile and smartphone Googlebot as Google explains here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/12/introducing-smartphone-googlebot-mobile.html
-
I really wouldn't recommend this as you're potentially making your site invisible to smartphone searchers. Googlebot mobile is Google's featurephone crawler and smartphone searchers usually get a variation of the desktop index. There's no need to use robots.txt at all if you properly redirect Googlebot mobile and smartphone Googlebot, as the right pages will be presented to the right searchers.
-
Cyrus, thanks for the mention. Appreciate it.
Glad to see more people talking about mobile SEO. I agree responsive web design can work well for duplicate pages, but I think there's often a case to be made for dedicated mobile content. I also think SEOs in general are too concerned with splitting link equity between desktop and mobile sites when mobile sites can rank without link equity with Google's Skip Redirect/Old Possum update in December. I have a mobile search column in Search Engine Land where I discussed responsive design and SEO if you're interested in learning more: http://searchengineland.com/for-mobile-seo-ask-what-do-mobile-searchers-need-116072
The best way to build a mobile site for better visibility in search is really to build a hybrid of responsive pages and dedicated mobile content. I've detailed the process here: http://searchengineland.com/how-to-best-optimize-your-mobile-site-for-seo-112940
-
This actually isn't true. Google has indexed mobile sites for years and showed them when relevant. But now with Google's Old Possum/Skip Redirect update in December you start to see a lot more mobile URLs ranking in smartphone search where desktop URLs were previously. Screenshots of Old Possum in the wild here: http://www.brysonmeunier.com/skip-redirectold-possum-in-google-smartphone-search-results/
-
There is the solution. I will add it to my robots.txt and use a no index attribute..........That i think is the easiest.
It would be nice to continue this discussion to see what everyone else has to say : ]
-
Hi Waqid,
Yes, if you create a mobile site that is accessible, search engines may discover and crawl it. There is a lot of debate surrounding this, but if they discover duplicate content, you might be dinged in the rankings.
This is a problem with 10,000 solutions.The best practice today, and one that search engines are leaning towards, is a SINGLE URL approach, in which you use CSS style sheets and HTML5 to get your content to display correctly across all browsers, both desktop and mobile.
In reality, this is often more difficult than is practical, so workarounds are required. At a minimum, if you do build separate pages for mobile, make sure they contain the rel=canonical tag pointing to the original URL of your main site. That way, if a search engine discovers these pages, they won't penalize you for duplicate content and will be able to give proper attribution.
Bryson Meunier has a blog on the subject of mobile SEO that's pretty insightful. You can find it here.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
If Google does crawl mobile sites would it not make sense that searches from mobile devices would be influenced? when you search Google from a mobile phone the URLs within the SERPs don't show m.yourdomain they show www.yourdomain.
I can see Google crawling these sites to get help assess a company. Did the user have a good experience? etc..
-
Google does crawl the Mobile sites. I have seen that happen several times. The best way to handle this is via robots.txt Lets say your site is yourdomain.com and mobile site is at m.yourdomain.com yourdomain.com/robots.txt User-agent: googlebot-mobile Disallow: / m.yourdomain.com/robots.txt User-agent: googlebot-mobile Disallow: User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: / I hope that helps.
-
please explain more, not enough info here, it's a mobile site you are launching for a client? it will get indexed if you allow it to get indexed. will it effect your rankings or your clients main site rankings? need more info for an answer
-
I dont think Google indexes it. When you go to any site via Google it never shows phone results. Once you click on a SERP result it first goes to the site and then a code in the site loads the mobile version. You set the mobile site in .htaccess. Hope this helps.
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
-
Content from Another Site
Hi there - I have a client that says they'll be "serving content by retrieving it from another URL using loadHTMLFile, performing some manipulations on it, and then pushing the result to the page using saveHTML()." Just wondering what the SEO implications of this will be. Will search engines be able to crawl the retrieved content? Is there a downside (I'm assuming we'll have some duplicate content issues)? Thanks for the help!!
Technical SEO | | NetStrategies1 -
Mobile first - what about content that you don't want to display on mobile?
ANOTHER mobile first question. Have searched the forum and didn't see something similar. Feel free to passive- aggressively link to an old thread. TL;DR - Some content would just clutter the page on mobile but is worth having on desktop. Will this now be ignored on desktop searches? Long form: We have a few ecommerce websites. We're toying with the idea of placing a lot more text on our collection/category pages. Primarily to try and set the scene for our products and sell the company a bit more effectively. It's also, obviously, an opportunity to include a couple of long tail keywords. Because mobile screens are small (duh) and easily cluttered, we're inclined _not _to display this content on mobile. In this case; will any SEO benefit be lost entirely, even to searchers on desktop? Sorry if I've completely misunderstood mobile-first indexing! Just an in-house marketing manager trying to keep up! cries into keyboard Thanks for your time.
Technical SEO | | MSGroup
Ross0 -
Why does my mobile site have a "?mobiRedirect=1" string at the end of the URL?
Hello, When trying to access my site from a smart-phone, I'm getting a redirected to the mobile version (which is correct), however at the end of the URL there is a redirect string that shows every time. I'm not sure why its its showing or how it automatically gets appended to the end of the URL each time. How can I configure my mobile site to prevent the ?mobiRedirect=1" from showing? For example, if you search for "Columbus Regional Health" on Google with a smart-phone, the first result should be for www.crh.org. If you click that, you should get redirected to www.crh.org/mobile , however its displaying the URL as http://www.crh.org/mobile/default.aspx?mobiRedirect=1 Does anyone know how to fix this? Thank you,
Technical SEO | | Liamis
Brian0 -
What effect does HTTPS have on SEO for a public site?
I have a client who I've been working with for 4 months but getting NO TRACTION at all on their SERPS. This is unusual for me! The only difference to their site from other clients is that the whole site is https so I'm wondering if that's making a big difference. The site is: https://www.cnc-ltd.co.uk Any help of hints would be great thanks in advance Steve
Technical SEO | | stevecounsell0 -
301 Multiple Sites to Main Site
Over the past couple years I had 3 sites that sold basically the same products and content. I later realized this had no value to my customers or Google so I 301 redirected Site 2 and Site 3 to my main site (Site 1). Of course this pushed a lot of page rank over to Site 1 and the site has been ranking great. About a week ago I moved my main site to a new eCommerce platform which required me to 301 redirect all the url's to the new platform url's which I did for all the main site links (Site 1). During this time I decided it was probably better off if I DID NOT 301 redirect all the links from the other 2 sites as well. I just didn't see the need as I figured Google realized at this point those sites were gone and I started fearing Google would get me for Page Rank munipulation for 301 redirecting 2 whole sites to my main site. Now I am getting over 1,000 404 crawl errors in GWT as Google can no longer find the URL's for Site 2 and Site 3. Plus my rankings have dropped substantially over the past week, part of which I know is from switching platforms. Question, did I make a mistake not 301 redirecting the url's from the old sites (Site 2 and Site 3) to my new ecommerce url's at Site 1?
Technical SEO | | SLINC0 -
Site Indexed but not Cached?
I launched a new website ~2 weeks ago that seems to be indexed but not cached. According to Google Webmaster most of the pages are indexed and I see them appear when I search site:www.xxx.com. However, when I type into the URL - cache:www.xxx.com I get a 404 error page from Google.
Technical SEO | | theLotter
I've checked more established websites and they are cached so I know I am checking correctly here... Why would my site be indexed but not in the cache?0 -
Videos for SEO & Profits
Hello, I'm in the middle of developing a website that will be a tutorial site for SEO, http://universityofseo.com. My plan is to do video tutorials & blog posts to help entry-level SEOs and SMB Owners to help them become familiarized with SEO through quick and easy to watch videos. I eventually want to turn this into a revenue stream through advertisements. I want to know for both SEO and profit reasons, if I should host the videos on youtube and then embed them on my site, or do something like Bits on the Run / Whistia and put ads in the videos that way? I'm not overly obsessed with monetizing the site, but it would be nice to do it, but first and foremost i'm concerned with optimizing the site, having great and actionable content, then monetizing it. I'd appreciate any help on this matter, Zach
Technical SEO | | Zachary_Russell0 -
Time on site
From what I understand, if you search for a keyword say "blue widgets" and you click on a result, and then spend 10 seconds there, and go back to google and click on a different result google will track that first result as being not very relevant. What I don't understand is what happens when (and this happens all the time, i did it today) you click on a result go to that page, find it (not?) relevant and then get distracted, phone call, or someone calls you into another room in the office. You end up accidentally leaving the tab open all day long, and never go back to the google search. So your time on site to google is what? infinity? there must be an upper cap here? at some point they must say, ok, the user is gone, time on site = our maximum = 5 minutes?!? Get me? any insight?
Technical SEO | | adriandg0