Dynamically serving different HTML on the same URL
-
Dear Mozers,
We are creating a mobile version for a real estate website. We are planning to dynamically serve different HTML on same URL.
I'm a little confused about the on-page optimization for the mobile version. The desktop version pages has lot of text content and I strongly believe that made us ranking for various keywords. Now if I'm creating this mobile version do I need to serve all the same exact text content on the mobile version too?
I found zillow.com using the same method, their desktop version has lot of text content and mobile version is clean without any text. Does this affect the sites SEO anyway?
Please help, share your thoughts.
- RIyas
-
Thanks Aleyda, I read your article it was very informative and my confusion has been sorted out
-
Hi Muhammed,
The text of your mobile version doesn't need to be exactly the same than the one from your desktop one, in fact, by dynamically serving different HTMLs you'll have much more flexibility to optimize your mobile HTMLs as much as possible from a content, design and SEO perspective to target your mobile audience.
Just to clarify, since I know is usually a concern in this type of situation: This is not cloaking. If you show the same content to both users and crawlers of the same device type then it's ok, you'll show the same mobile optimized HTMLs versions to both mobile users and crawlers, and the other desktop optimized HTMLs, to both desktop users and crawlers.
I would recommend you to check this post I wrote some time ago with some of the most common concerns when doing Mobile SEO, where this and other questions are clarified.
Thanks!
-
Rylas,
I don't believe it does effect the SEO as long as you are serving up the content properly. I wouldn't do a css attribute of display:none to any of the content you don't want to show. Also write the mobile version for the user not for Google. Make it clean and easy to understand.
*Link for other ways to 'hide' content
http://css-tricks.com/places-its-tempting-to-use-display-none-but-dont/
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
-
Unsolved URL dynamic structure issue for new global site where I will redirect multiple well-working sites.
Dear all, We are working on a new platform called [https://www.piktalent.com](link url), were basically we aim to redirect many smaller sites we have with quite a lot of SEO traffic related to internships. Our previous sites are some like www.spain-internship.com, www.europe-internship.com and other similars we have (around 9). Our idea is to smoothly redirect a bit by a bit many of the sites to this new platform which is a custom made site in python and node, much more scalable and willing to develop app, etc etc etc...to become a bigger platform. For the new site, we decided to create 3 areas for the main content: piktalent.com/opportunities (all the vacancies) , piktalent.com/internships and piktalent.com/jobs so we can categorize the different types of pages and things we have and under opportunities we have all the vacancies. The problem comes with the site when we generate the diferent static landings and dynamic searches. We have static landing pages generated like www.piktalent.com/internships/madrid but dynamically it also generates www.piktalent.com/opportunities?search=madrid. Also, most of the searches will generate that type of urls, not following the structure of Domain name / type of vacancy/ city / name of the vacancy following the dynamic search structure. I have been thinking 2 potential solutions for this, either applying canonicals, or adding the suffix in webmasters as non index.... but... What do you think is the right approach for this? I am worried about potential duplicate content and conflicts between static content dynamic one. My CTO insists that the dynamic has to be like that but.... I am not 100% sure. Someone can provide input on this? Is there a way to block the dynamic urls generated? Someone with a similar experience? Regards,
Technical SEO | | Jose_jimenez0 -
Canonical urls - do my web pages need them?
Hello, I'm going round in circles with this issue, so hopefully someone can help... The Moz crawl of my website lists a number of pages as "missing canonical url". The pages are all different and do not have similar content. Do I need to add a canonical url to each page? My agency quoted the following (x referencing this page: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/consolidate-duplicate-urls) list itemYou would use Canonical URLs if: list item"...you have a single page that's accessible by multiple URLs, or different pages with similar content (for example, a page with both a mobile and a desktop version), Google sees these as duplicate versions of the same page." list itemThis is not the case here and so we would not propose to change anything. We could add Canonical URLs if the client feels that it is critical which occurs an additional cost. Any help / advice much appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | rj_dale0 -
New website on new url?
We have a new website on a new url (been up for around 2 years now) and our old website is slowly fading in the background, we are now at the point where the money is still ok but we are having issues running both side by side, we have a calculator on each page and are thinking about removing this and adding a box with please order from our new site here (with url of similar page). Now the issue is we don't want to link for SEO purposes and google hammer us (thinking of no - following these) and we also have a penalty we got in 2012 on the site but we did get out of this, would this cause any issue to the new site?
Technical SEO | | BobAnderson1 -
HTML Site for Speed
I have a few small sites and landing pages on Wordpress that I want to load a lot quicker than they do. It occurred to me that if there is not a lot of content management necessary, I should simply make the static web pages straight html instead of trying all the modifications necessary to get some Wordpress sites and themes to load quicker. I have noticed the html sites I have load lighting fast on slow hosting service. Is this a good idea, can anyone think of drawbacks to it? Security? Responsiveness? SEO? And what about taking some company's sites with blog straight html so the home page loads quick, and then using Wordpress for the blog?
Technical SEO | | phogan0 -
Exact URL Match For Ranking
Has anyone else run into this issue? I have a competitor that purchases domain names for popular inner pages we are trying to rank for. We are trying to build a brand, our competitors have a lower domain authority but rank higher for inner pages in the serps with VERY little content, backlinks/seo work, they host a single page and do a re-direct to their main site. Would this be a good long term strategy? EX. We sell golf clubs our brand name is golfcity (Ex only) and we carry callaway clubs, our competitor is also building a brand but they purchased callawayclubs.net and do a re-direct. They rank on page one for keywords callaway clubs. If I do try to do this does one have an advantage over another? .com. net .org. because Ive seem them all used and rank on page 1. Thank you!!!
Technical SEO | | TP_Marketing0 -
Best Practices for adding Dynamic URL's to XML Sitemap
Hi Guys, I'm working on an ecommerce website with all the product pages using dynamic URL's (we also have a few static pages but there is no issue with them). The products are updated on the site every couple of hours (because we sell out or the special offer expires) and as a result I keep seeing heaps of 404 errors in Google Webmaster tools and am trying to avoid this (if possible). I have already created an XML sitemap for the static pages and am now looking at incorporating the dynamic product pages but am not sure what is the best approach. The URL structure for the products are as follows: http://www.xyz.com/products/product1-is-really-cool
Technical SEO | | seekjobs
http://www.xyz.com/products/product2-is-even-cooler
http://www.xyz.com/products/product3-is-the-coolest Here are 2 approaches I was considering: 1. To just include the dynamic product URLS within the same sitemap as the static URLs using just the following http://www.xyz.com/products/ - This is so spiders have access to the folder the products are in and I don't have to create an automated sitemap for all product OR 2. Create a separate automated sitemap that updates when ever a product is updated and include the change frequency to be hourly - This is so spiders always have as close to be up to date sitemap when they crawl the sitemap I look forward to hearing your thoughts, opinions, suggestions and/or previous experiences with this. Thanks heaps, LW0 -
How much of a hit to changing urls?
Hi, We have a few pages that from an SEO perspective have poor URLs. We are planning on changing them (and 301 redirecting) the old page to the new page. I heard in the past, this can temporarily negatively impact your SERP rank etc. Since the old URLs are bad, even if there is a temporary negative hit, changing them in the long run it is better, but curious if anyone has any experience on what to expect.
Technical SEO | | NicB10 -
Difference between URL Rewrites and 301 Redirects for Rankings
What is the difference between URL rewriting and 301 redirects? Specifically if my home page is rewriting the www. version and the /index.html version rather than 301 redirecting them is this equivalent? Does it still pass the link juice on those alternate variations the same way a 301 redirect will?
Technical SEO | | rcarll0