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.
M.ExampleSite vs mobile.ExampleSite vs ExampleSite.com
-
Hi,
I have a call with a potential client tomorrow where all I know is that they are wigged-out about canonicalization, indexing and architecture for their three sites:
The sites are pretty large... 350k for the mobiles and 5 million for the main site. They're a retailer with endless products. They're main site is not mobile-responsive, which is evidently why they have the m and mobile sites. Why two, I don't know.
This is how they currently hand this:
What would you suggest they do about this? The most comprehensive fix would be making the main site mobile responsive and 301 the old mobile sub domains to the main site. That's probably too much work for them. So, what more would you suggest and why?
Your thoughts? Best... Mike
P.S.,
Beneath my hand-drawn portrait avatar above it says "Staff" at this moment, which I am not. Some kind of bug I guess.
-
Hi Donna,
Thanks for all the help. I really appreciate it.
Best... Mike
-
Give them two options in a grid format:
(1) do nothing;
(2) redirect mobile to desktop
To the right of that, use two columns to convey pros and cons.
I guess you could do nothing and measure the impact for a few months, comparing this year to last. If things don't look good, then execute option 2. Might be hard to isolate the impact of the mobile index versus anything else though, but it's probably the best you can do.
And then there's the 3rd option... go responsive, but as you've said, you don't have time or budget for that unfortunately.
-
Hi Donna,
Thanks for the speedy reply. Yes, the thing that makes me nervous about that recommendation from the article is how do I even begin to weigh the odds on it being a net gain and then convey it to management? I mean, it's one thing for me to think, "yeah, let's roll the dice" and another to convey the trade-offs to a very typical management in something like numbers.
Thank you for noticing my avatar portrait. I did it over a Summer in the south of France. It will probably be worth a fortune once I am gone and regarded as a giant of the early 21st century world of art.
I wrote Moz about the "Staff" thing and it looks like they deleted the title... all titles really.
Best... Mike
-
What you have to weigh is the user impact. How much traffic are you currently getting from mobile devices? Will the desktop version of the website look awful, be hard to interact with or understand on a mobile phone or tablet device? You'll also lose the "mobile friendly" designation which might lower your rankings and click-thru rates.
It's a trade-off decision only you can make.
PS - I don't see "Staff" under your cool avatar.
-
Hi Donna,
Thanks for the insight and resource. What do you think of while waiting for the next year mobile responsive site, to 301 the two existing mobile sites to the desktop site? How would one begin to estimate the effect of that? Thanks, again.
Best... Mike
-
Michael,
I read a helpful article that touched on this exact topic yesterday. It's https://www.searchenginejournal.com/mobile-first-index-actually-mean/178017/ . As you've already pointed out, a responsive solution is best, but if the website's mobile and desktop content are the same, you may not have to do anything right away.
Check it out.
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
-
Duplicate H1 on single page for mobile and desktop
I have a responsive site and whilst this works and is liked by google from a user perspective the pages could look better on mobile. I have a wordpress site and use the Divi Builder with elegant themes and have developed a separate page header for mobile that uses a manipulated background image and smaller H1 font size. When crawling the site two H1s can be detected on the same page - they are exactly the same words and only one will show according to device. However, I need to know if this will cause me a problem with google and SEO. As the mobile changes are not just font size but also adaptations to some visual elements it is not something I can simply alter in the CSS. Would appreciate some input as to whether this is a problem or not
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cells4Life0 -
The Great Subdomain vs. Subfolder Debate, what is the best answer?
Recently one of my clients was hesitant to move their new store locator pages to a subdomain. They have some SEO knowledge and cited the whiteboard Friday article at https://azwa.1clkaccess.in/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday. While it is very possible that Rand Fiskin has a valid point I felt hesitant to let this be the final verdict. John Mueller from Google Webmaster Central claims that Google is indifferent towards subdomains vs subfolders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h1t5fs5VcI#t=50 Also this SEO disagreed with Rand Fiskin’s post about using sub folders instead of sub domains. He claims that Rand Fiskin ran only 3 experiments over 2 years, while he has tested multiple subdomain vs subfolder experiments over 10 years and observed no difference. http://www.seo-theory.com/2015/02/06/subdomains-vs-subfolders-what-are-the-facts-on-rankings/ Here is another post from the Website Magazine. They too believe that there is no SEO benefits of a subdomain vs subfolder infrastructure. Proper SEO and infrastructure is what is most important. http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2015/03/10/seo-inquiry-subdomains-subdirectories.aspx Again Rand might be right, but I rather provide a recommendation to my client based on an authoritative source such as a Google engineer like John Mueller. Does anybody else have any thoughts and/or insight about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB3 -
Changing from .com to .com.au
Hi All, we are looking for some guidance please, if at all possible. We have .com domain (the domain is older than 10 years), we have been using it for 2 years. We also have .com.au version of the domain (the domain is 2 years old, pointing to the .com domain) and isn't being used. We are an Australian based company. Our question is, should we be using .com.au instead of .com and if so, how would you advise going about doing the change over without having huge SEO impact on our business (negatively). We are on the home page for most of the searches we have optimized for, but we are always below the .com.au's - which is why we are considering the possibility of the move? Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | creativeground0 -
H2 vs. H3 Tags for Category Navigation
Hey, all. I have client that uses tags in the navigation for its blog. For example, tags might appear around "Library," "Recent Posts," etc. This is handled through their WordPress theme. This seems fairly standard, but I wonder whether tags are semantically appropriate. Since each blog post is fairly lengthy (about 500-1000 words) with multiple tags, would it be more appropriate to use tags for this menu navigation? Are we cutting into the effectiveness of our tags by using them for menu navigation? The navigation is certainly an important page element, and it structures content, so it seems that it should use some header tag. Anyways, your thoughts are greatly appreciated. I'm a content creator, not an SEO, so this is a bit out of my skillset.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ask44435230 -
What if page exists for desktop but not mobile?
I have a domain (no subdomains) that serves up different dynamic content for mobile/desktop pages--each having the exact same page url, kind of a semi responsive design, and will be using "Vary: User-Agent" to give Google a heads up on this setup. However, some of the pages are only valid for mobile or only valid for desktop. In the case of when a page is valid only for mobile (call it mysite.com/mobile-page-only ), Google Webmaster Tools is giving me a soft 404 error under Desktop, saying that the page does not exist, Apparently it is doing that because my program is actually redirecting the user/crawler to the home page. It appears from the info about soft 404 errors that Google is saying since it "doesn't exist" I should give the user a 404 page--which I can make it customized and give the user an option to go to the home page, or choose links from a menu, etc.. My concern is that if I tell the desktop bot that mysite.com/mobile-page-only basically is a 404 error (ie doesn't exist), that it could mess up the mobile bot indexing for that page--since it definitely DOES exist for mobile users.. Does anyone here know for sure that Google will index a page for mobile that is a 404 not found for desktop and vice versa? Obviously it is important to not remove something from an index in which it belongs, so whether Google is careful to differential the two is a very important issue. Has anybody here dealt with this or seen anything from Google that addresses it? Might one be better off leaving it as a soft 404 error? EDIT: also, what about Bing and Yahoo? Can we assume they will handle it the same way? EDIT: closely related question--in a case like mine does Google need a separate sitemap for the valid mobile pages and valid desktop pages even though most links will be in both? I can't tell from reading several q&a on this. Thanks, Ted
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
Ranking Page - Category vs. Blog Post - What is best for CTR?
Hi, I am not sure wether I shall rank with a category page, or create a new post. Let me explain... If I google for 'Basic SEO' I see an article from Rand with Authorship markup. That's cool so I can go straight to this result because I know there might be some good insight. BUT: 'Basic SEO' is also an category at MOZ an it is not ranking. On the other hand, if I google for 'advanced SEO' then the MOZ category for 'advanced SEO' is ranking. But there is no authorship image, so users are much less likely to click on that result. Now, I want to rank for a very important keyword for me (content keyword, not transactional). Therefor, I have a category called 'yoga exercises'. But shall I rather create an post about them only to increase CTR due to Google Authorship? I read in Google guidelines that Authorship on homepage an category pages are not appreciated. Hope you have some insights that can help me out.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | soralsokal0 -
301 or 302 Redirects to Mobile Site
When it's detected that a mobile device is accessing the site it has the ability to redirect from www.example.com to m.example.com. Does it make more sense to employ a 301 or 302 redirect here? Google says a 301 but does not explain why (although usually I stick to "when in doubt, 301") . It seems like a 302 would prevent passing link juice to the mobile site and having mobile-optimized results also showing up in Google's index. What is the preference here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOTGT0 -
External 404 vs Internal 404
Which one is bad? External - when someone adds an incorrect link to your site, maybe does a typo when linking to an inner page. This page never existed on your site, google shows this as a 404 in Webmaster tools. Internal - a page existed, google indexed it, and you deleted it and didnt add a 301. Internal ones are in the webmaster's control, and i can understand if google gets upset if it sees a 404 for a URL that existed before, however surely "externally created" 404 shoudnt cause any harm cause that page never existed. And someone has inserted an incorrect link to your site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamBuck0