Can you use multiple rel alternate tags for different device subdomains?
-
When redirecting from desktop to mobile with a separate URL structure, you need to have a rel alternate - rel canonical handshake to define the relationship between the pages. But if you have a different subdomain for different mobile devices, can you add more than one rel alternate tag on the desktop page?
EG if site.com is redirecting to iphone.site.com, m.site.com, android.site.com
-
Hey Massimliano,
I responded to you over here too, but basically: Googlebot's user agent declares itself to be an iPhone, so I'd rel="alternate" over to your iphone.site.com version. Rel="alternate" is supposed to redirect based on the width of the screen, not the device type, so I don't know how you'd differentiate between your multiple rel="alternate"s otherwise.
I've never heard of anyone using this set up before, so let us know how it goes!
Kristina
-
I would just select one mobile subdomain to act as your canonical. Then at a later stage you can begin redirecting the other mobile versions to this one canonical version.
-
Hi Patrick, thanks for the response.
It is a legacy architecture that's in place, this would be a temporary situation while the new mobile solution is being built.
I was just wondering about the possibility of defining more than one rel alternate, I've never seen anyone do it (because why would you :P) but in the interest of mad science, would the relationship work between a canonical on each mobile subdomain pointing to multile rel alternate tags on desktop.
-
Hi there
You shouldn't have to redirect for different mobile sites depending on device. Is there a reason you are doing so? I would focus on one mobile site, properly implement tags, and go from there.
Let me know - good luck!
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
-
Move to new domain using Canonical Tag
At the moment, I am moving from olddomain.com (niche site) to the newdomain.com (multi-niche site). Due to some reasons, I do not want to use 301 right now and planning to use the canonical pointing to the new domain instead. Would Google rank the new site instead of the old site? From what I have learnt, the canonical tag lets Google know that which is the main source of the contents. Thank you very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | india-morocco0 -
Heading Tags (Specifically H2) being used within images
Hello, Mozzers I have a question regarding placement of heading tags. I have seen this asked a few times on the forum but some are from a couple years ago so wanted to get a more up to date answer regarding this. We want to add H2 tags across our site but our two options are to wrap images we are using as navigation on the top of the page, these are directly below our pages H1 tag and actually make sense. Example H1 title: Vehicles Images are specific brand logo with H2 being wrapped to pull the img alt: "Ford Vehicles" "Checvy vehicles" etc. The wrap would look something like this: I appreciate your time, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirin443550 -
Blog tags are creating excessive duplicate content...should we use rel canonicals or 301 redirects?
We are having an issue with our cilent's blog creating excessive duplicate content via blog tags. The duplicate webpages from tags offer absolutely no value (we can't even see the tag). Should we just 301 redirect the tagged page or use a rel canonical?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanguardCommunications0 -
Duplicating a site on 2 different ccTLDs and using cannonical
Hello, We have a site that sells a certain product on www.example.com. This site contains thousands of pages including a whole section of well written content that we invested a lot of money in making. The site ranks on many KWs both brand and non-brand related. SERPs include the Homepage and many of the articles mentioned. We receive traffic and clients to this site from around the world, BUT our main geo-targeting is UK. Due to lack of resources and some legal needs we now have to create a new site - www.example.co.uk that all UK traffic will be able to purchase the product only from this site and not from the .com site anymore. We have no resources to create new content for the new .co.uk site and that is the reason we want to duplicate the site on both domains and use a canonical tag to point the .co.uk site as the primary site. Does anyone have experience with such activity? will this work across the whole site? We need to have a fast solution here, as we do not have too much time to wait because of the legal issue I mentioned. What is the best solutions you can offer to do this so we do not lose important SERPs. On the one hand since our main market is the UK, we assume the main site to promote will be www.example.co.uk but as said earlier, we still have users from other parts of the world as well. Is there any risk that we are missing here? Thanks James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tit0 -
Alternative Markup Challenge. Can anyone help?
I have a challenge around alternative markup. We currently operate a single domain with geo-targeted folders and alternative markup implemented. We are now now looking to expand this out to non-English content. Current Implementation; All generic English language content hosted on the main domain, with x5 English language content variations (locales) available under a folder structure (.com/en-us/ etc.). Alternative markup is in place for all locales within the HTML, implemented automatically by developers via the CMS. Locale folders geo-targeted via GWT and Bing WT. Planned Launch; Introduction of 5 new non-English locale folders (e.g. /de-de/ etc.), targeted to their respective country and language. Content language will be mixed, with around 1/10 of pages translated and the other 9/10 of pages (business listings) having their body content remain in English, with headers / footers translated. Locale folders will be geo-targeted via GWT and Bing WT. Folder and markup usage TBC. Options; Folders; Implement folder structure /de/, attempting to indicate country but not language (issue; usually a single identifier indicates language, not country?). Implement /de-de/ folder structure to match the English locales and maintain correct country targeting (issue; some content is not in language). Alternative markup; Do not make use of markup at all. Implement CMS based automated markup on all English and non-English content throughout the locale (e.g. /de-de/), but exclude English language versions (e.g. /en-gb/). Attempt manually implementing markup to bridge the English and non-English locales, potentially creating future issues with new content going live and content being removed. A heavy risk. Current approach is webmaster tools targeting, a /de-de/ folder structure and automated implementation of markup. This means English language URLs will have markup and non-English language URLs will have markup, but they will not match up (e.g. English pages will never have markup for non-English language content). If you minds haven't melted, what's your thoughts? Any help is much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HelloAlba0 -
Ecommerce: remove duplicate product pages or use rel=canonical
Say we have a white-widget that is in our white widget collection and also in our wedding widget collection. Currently, we have 3 different URLs for that product (white-widgets/white-widget and wedding-widgets/white-widget and all-widgets/white-widget).We are automatically generating a rel=canonical tag for those individual collection product pages that canonical the original product page (/all-widgets/white-widget). This guide says that is the structure Zappos uses and says "There is an elegance to this approach. However, I would re-visit it today in light of changes in the SEO world."
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | birchlore
I noticed that Zappos, and many other shops now actually just link back to the parent product page (e.g. If I am in wedding widget section and click on the widget, I go to all-products/white-widget instead of wedding-widgets/white-widget).So my question is:Should we even have these individual product URLs or just get rid of them altogether? My original thought was that it would help SEO for search term "white wedding widget" to have a product URL wedding-widget/white-widget but we won't even be taking advantage of that by using rel=canonical anyway.0 -
How are PDF image alt tags and "subject" field in document properties used for search
Hello, 1. Does google use image alt tags? According to this 2011 document, the answer is no, but I have seen others claiming yes- has google since begun using alt tags for images within PDFs? http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pdfs-in-google-search-results.html I am trying to decide if it is worth updating existing PDFs with alt tags for images for the purpose of SEO. 2. How does Google use the "Subject" field in document properties for a PDF? Should it be used as a description field for the document, similar to a meta description? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | winstoncho0 -
Can you Canonical to a URL in a different folder under the same domain?
I want to know if it's possible to add a canonical tag to a URL that points to a URL under a different folder. Content is just about the same. Here's an example (fake urls and product, but structure and parameters are similar to my client's website): domain.com/toy-ducks-results.aspx?color=Purple&model=Elvis domain.com/toy-ducks-details.aspx?color=Purple&model=Elvis&style=Sparkly Let's say that my purple Elvis ducks are really popular. Is there any harm in putting a rel=canonical on the Sparkly Elvis ducks page to the purple Elvis ducks page? Even though they are two different folders? /toy-ducks-results and /toy-ducks-details So, in effect, the preferred folder is /toy-ducks-results Thanks in advance for any help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EEE30