Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I redirect mobile traffic to a different url? Will it hurt SEO?
-
I'm working on a site that has lots of great content and ranks well but essentially the money is generated by affiliate links. I don't have a mobile version of the site but the company I'm affiliated with does offer a mobile redirect to their domain. Will redirecting mobile traffic to a different url hurt my SEO? I think the user will get a better experience by landing on a mobile page but I don't know if google will see it like that.
Any thoughts?
-
Hi Samuel,
I understand why it makes sense from a user experience perspective, although I'd be a little concerned that it would be a bit weird, especially if the domains are branded differently.
I'd probably start by avoiding an automatic redirect. The simplest option is probably to include a prominent CTA on the desktop version that says 'view mobile version at www.otherdomain.com'. If you want to get a bit fancier, you could display a message when a mobile user agent is detected, saying something like 'it looks like you're on a mobile device. Would you like to view a mobile-friendly version of this page?'. If you do this, make sure that
- a) the page is still accessible to a crawler with a mobile user agent (in other words, don't require input from the mobile user in order to view the desktop version, just include it as an option)
- b) use a cookie to avoid asking your mobile users to answer the question again every time they visit.
If you really want to do the redirect, start by testing on just a couple pages to check for any negative impact before rolling it out further.
-
I don't think you will have any problem. It won't be a doorway page or something like that because you are not deceiving the users, you are actually showing them the information they are requesting in the best possible way.
-
Thanks for your reply. I makes sense to me to have users land on a mobile page but just to clarify I'd be redirecting mobile traffic to a completely different domain not just a different URL. Will that be a problem?
-
Hi Samuel,
Google won't penalize you in any way if you redirect mobile users to another URL. Here you can find Google's Recommendations for building smartphone-optimized websites.
The best way to go for them is building a responsive design, but as you can see, Google encourages mobile redirections too.
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
-
Query for paginated URLs - Shopify
Hi there, /collections/living-room-furniture?page=2
On-Page Optimization | | williamhuynh
/collections/living-room-furniture?page=3
/collections/living-room-furniture?page=4 Is that ok to make all the above paginated URLs canonicalised with their main category /collections/living-room-furniture Also, does it needs to be noindex, follow as well? Please advice, thank you!1 -
Canonical: Same content but different countries
I'm building a website that has content made for specific countries. The url format is: MyWebsite.com/<country name="">/</country> Some of the pages for <specific url="">are the same for different countries, the <specific url="">would be the same as well. The only difference would be the <country name="">.</country></specific></specific> How do I deal with canonical issues to avoid Google thinking I'm presenting the same content?
On-Page Optimization | | newbyguy0 -
Will shortening down the amount of text on my pages affect it's SEO performance?
My website has several pages with a lot of text that becomes pretty boring. I'm looking at shortening down the amount of copy on each page but then within the updated, shortened copy, integrating more target keywords naturally. Will shortening down the current copy have a negative effect on my SEO performance?
On-Page Optimization | | Liquid20150 -
Naked domain redirection info
Hi Guys Been reading one or two posts about 'naked domains' v the 'www' derivative and was wondering... What is your opinion on this, is there a definitive benefit to your business in making the switch in terms of ranking? Apart from the Google released info, do you have any further recommended reading on this subject matter? Thanks in advance Daren
On-Page Optimization | | ITsoldSEO0 -
Home page keyword in url
I have been looking into SEO for a few weeks now trying to perfect a homepage. Going through various sources on MOZ, and other examples out there on the internet, I keep seeing that you should have your keyword in the URL of the page. The homepage is the page most people want to rank the highest in google searches, however, you cannot put the keyword in the URL as most home page URLs are simply /. Should I actually make the home like this: www.example.com/key-word-example? I would imagine this would not be the normal for many users and would seem like it's not the home page.
On-Page Optimization | | Matthew_smart0 -
Using Escaped Fragments with SEO
Our e-commerce platform is in the process of changing to what we call app based stores (essentially running in a browser as single page web-app) With these new stores they are being built in HTML 5 and using escaped fragments.
On-Page Optimization | | marketing_zoovy.com
Currently merchants are usually running 2 stores until we launch to app site at 100%. My questions are really concerning the app stores which right now show on a subdomain but will essentially take over the primary domain. Here is an example:
app.tikimater.com and app.sportsworld.com Since I am not a developer, I'm really having a hard time understanding the escaped fragments. I'm using this but https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started I'm not sure what my actual urls should look like and what the canonical should be set to. Right now they have been removed but previously they had http:app.tikimaster.com#!v=1 Also, and how I should be setting up my meta information for Google so 1) pages are indexed timely 2) pages are indexed with the correct information. I am still setting the meta titles and descriptions but in some instances Google uses other info. With the new platform we are moving away from on page content (written paragraphs) but category pages would have related products embedded. Should I still be pushing to have some type of intro text, since it would solely be for SEO and not the shoppers experience. All product pages have content (product description etc) Thank you for any advice0 -
Url structure with dash or slash
Hi There We have a content website. We don't rank well category image related searches but we get quite good traffic for those keywords. Those keywords are mostly like "category images". We want to change our url structure and we have 2 options now. 1- domain.com/category/category-images 2-domain.com/category/images option 1 repeats the category name so it looks spammy option 2 doesn't really have the keyword. any ideas which one tho choose? Thanks! ps: we don't want to use domain.com/category-images (too many root link)
On-Page Optimization | | muminaydin0 -
Would it be bad to change the canonical URL to the most recent page that has duplicate content, or should we just 301 redirect to the new page?
Is it bad to change the canonical URL in the tag, meaning does it lose it's stats? If we add a new page that may have duplicate content, but we want that page to be indexed over the older pages, should we just change the canonical page or redirect from the original canonical page? Thanks so much! -Amy
On-Page Optimization | | MeghanPrudencio0