Impact SEO when sharing with other PC urls a mobile website url

[Letty]

Struggle with the following impact on SEO if starting to share mobile website URL.

We have multiple PC urls (5 different domains).For example www.site1.com, www.site2.com, www.site3.com, www.site4.com and www.site5.com.

Now I have to convince other people within the company not to use one mobile website url for all different domains. The intention is to direct all mobile traffic from site1, site2, site3, site4 and site5 to the url: m.site4.com.

Based on the following articles I already wanted to combine the www.site4.com with the m.site4.com to one entity, based on the third method which is supported by Google.                   https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details and http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/changes-in-rankings-of-smartphone_11.html

But now I have to give SEO impact feedback on the other domains.                                                       The obvious one is site1, site2, site3 and site5 will not have positive mobile SERP indexation.         Second impact: Duplicated content issues across multiple websites.
Third impact:users from site1, site2, site3 and site5 will see the change in URL, could give a negative user experience.
Fourth impact: text on site1 / site2 / site3 / site5 is not the same as on site 4 this will implement maybe hidden content issues, which could cause penalties.

Do I miss other negative SEO impact, I have been searching a lot of the articles /  blogs, Q&A but can't really find sufficient information about this particular subject. Any feedback or links to articles / blogs / Q&A are highly appreciated.

[KristinaKledzik]

Hey Letty,

It's been about a month since you posted this - how are things going? Did the information Thomas give you help the process?

Just to make sure I'm clear on your original question, the situation is:

• You have 5 desktop websites on 5 separate domains
• You have mobile versions of the site, but just on 1 domain (as an "m" subdomain)
• All of these sites currently share the same mobile platform

The issues are:

• To search engines, it will look like 4 of your sites don't have mobile versions, and the one mobile site will have "duplicate" content with the other desktop domains
• Visitors may be skeptical if they try to visit one domain and it automatically redirects/recommends that they visit another URL for the mobile page

The answer is, basically, you're right. Search engines are getting pretty good at recognizing when a separate mobile URL or subdomain is actually the mobile version of a desktop site, but this structure is really confusing. (If it confuses humans, it's probably going to confuse search engines.) You should really set up separate m.site#.com subdomains for each site you own and mimic the structure of your desktop site on each one.

Did that answer your question? Is there anything else I can help with?

Kristina

[BlueprintMarketing]

I understand what you're saying. And I agree. Thank you for the things I had not been too clear on.

If I ask are you using a CMS of any sort or is this just. You know site when you're discussing the five different websites?

Web servers and telling great deal about your website when query. For instance I suggest using this tool to find out exactly what the servers find out about site when it is clearly using this is free however you do have to sign up.

https://www.ultratools.com/tools/websiteInfoResult

The tools part is very valuable as well and you can sign up at ultratools.com

You'll create me to create a mobile CSS & style sheet for the subdomain to be acted on when the server has detected the device

I hope this is of help to you.

https://github.com/browsermedia/browsercms/wiki/Configuring-a-mobile-subdomain-for-apache

http://www.sitepoint.com/designing-for-mobile-web-3/

http://moz.com/community/q/mobile-redirect-better-to-example-com-m-or-m-example-com

Ideally what should happen when you're creating a mobile subdomain is the website itself should be able to detect whether or not it is necessary to put the person on and.example.com or example.com therefore the size of the screen and a few other things that all servers can tell just by the person who actually accesses their URL will be able to serve the right content. Therefore you will have to create cname for m.example.com

Sincerely,

Thomas

[Letty]

Hi Thomas,

Yes, indeed responsive design would be the optimum solution, but for this moment we work in phases.The responsive design will follow in the next stage. So not a solution at this point in time.

And yes, I'm talking about 5 different urls, but all with their own different unique content, targetting on different audiences. Now need to start sharing one mobile platform.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi,

If you make your website responsive you do not need to have a secular mobile URL. I need to ask a quick question are you saying that you're using five URLs for one website? When you say PC domains?

For instance if you go to a website that will fit on your phone usually like zippykid.com

Just using it as a example. You can see that the site is easy to navigate and response to the screen it is being used on. This would be very good for Google for you. You would not need a separate URL in case you spoke about above using M.example.com or mobile that would be a subdomain and it would not be necessary.

I hope this is been of help,

Thomas