What is the best way to mobile optimize
your website while keeping the best possible SEO profile? There are
various ways to deliver your site content to mobile users, which include
having a responsive design, and having a separate mobile (m.xyz.com)
website. All have their merits and de-merits. But which one is the most
viable option from a SEO point-of-view? Should you use responsive web
design to deliver web content to mobile users, instead of redirecting to
separate mobile version of a webpage?
Responsive Web Design versus Mobile pages
RWD (Responsive Web Design) is probably the most popular mobile
optimization technique used in websites today. It involves designing
content that automatically resizes and rearranges itself to fit the
screen size and resolution of any user-agent (device). Since the content
itself is redirecting, there's no need to create custom redirects to
other mobile pages, or changing the on-page content itself.
In contrast, having a specialized mobile version of a webpage relies on
custom redirections to direct mobile users towards different versions of
a webpage. Smartphone and tablet users get redirected to an - optimized
version of a page respectively. This implementation allows you fully
customise your content for a mobile audience, since it’s often an
independently hosted solution. This also means you need to make separate
updates for content or styling pieces to ensure a smooth user
experience.
Mobile pages - what could go wrong?
Both of these optimization techniques are widely popular, and there's
nothing inherently wrong with any of them. Both have an equal impact on
SEO, and superiority of one over the other cannot be claimed, not
without facts anyway.
But here's the catch. It matters not what you implement, but how you implement it.
Canonicalization
Mobile pages are served on a different sub-domain, and hence contain the
same content, but hosted on an entirely different page (URI). There's
the problem of redirection, which needs to be handled carefully, or else
it would be ill-perceived by search engines.
Because the two pages contain more or less the same content, you need to use the rel="canonical" very carefully. People often make mistakes while using rel="canonical", and hence end up doing more harm than good. Mobile pages are only worth it if you set them up correctly.
Here are some best practices for using rel="canonical" properly.
User experience
In the end, it all comes down to user-experience. I've seen some
exceptional mobile sites, and some really horrible responsive designs.
So the only thing that really matters is how well are users reacting to
your optimization techniques. Remember: you're creating content for
users, not search engines.
Got any questions? Feel free to ask us in the comments section below. Hope this post helped. Cheers :)