Responsive Vs Mobile Sites
-
I know this is some cutting edge technology, but I think that this will be a very important topic in the coming months, as html5/css3 becomses more and more the standard, or at least standardized, I think the topic of this in relation to SEO will also arise much more.
My question is simple, is it better to code a responsive site, or a completely mobile site for a small company with no special needs (mobile ordering, ecommerce, etc...) I obviously know the visuall differences, and, personally, I think respomsive websites look better. From an seo perspective, my big thing is for the resizing, for example, with WordPress, when you reach the tablet size you can set the sidebar to basically display:none, can that impact your website?
I would really appreciate any feedback
-
Glad I could be of help. If you need any other guidance as you get into it, do just get in touch, I'd be happy to help. My contact details are on my SEOmoz profile
-
Thanks for that. It really provides some new insights that I really didn't think about before. My true basis on responsive themes is the WordPress 2011 (twenty-eleven) theme. When it gets scaled down to smartphone, or even tablet sizes, it disables the sidebar altogether. I think this is a bad idea, for the obvious SEO Reasons (displaying different content to different users on the same site, even though this is a good use of it). As i'm expanding my plethora of web design skill, I think responsive is going to be the way to go. The new Dreamweaver CS6 has a really cool implementation of the grid system (and cross device compatablitly) features, which will help me greatly once I actually learn to use these.
Thanks for taking the time to respond
Zach
-
Right, you seem to be asking two questions here - responsive or not? And if you head for responsive then could it impact your SEO.
Responsive or Not As with any website question the issue is going to come down to what's best for your users or your target users. The same question could be 'app or mobile website' for example.
The more I've worked in web design the more I am seeing that when a user is searching on their phone they want the same answers as if they were searching on their laptop or desktop. The relevancy of what they are delivered should not be changed however the format must be changed to suit their device.
The above point being said about 'best for your users', I fall very much into the line of thought that you should be providing exactly the same content to mobile and non-mobile users, it will simply be the design or layout which changes.
A responsive site takes time to code and test - but once the wireframe is sorted and responds well to different devices, then you're sorted as each page should flow across the devices without an issue.
If you have a separate mobile website then you are suddenly coding and managing two websites and, to be honest, a mobile website will need testing across devices and tweaking accordingly so you're almost duplicating your work (you're doing responsive web design but on a second site), something I just don't see the point of, if your whole website fits the majority of devices accessing it.
So for me: responsive
Can Responsive Affect SEO? You need to make sure that it is done well and that you're not deluding the search engines or users in any way. Personally, I don't see the point in 'hiding a sidebar' when responsive web design and CSS permits you to reformat it and display it in a mobile-friendly way. Why reduce the mobile user's experience if you, with a bit more work, can give them an appropriate and rich experience?
So if you do it properly, you're providing the same content to mobile users but just showing it differently. If you keep that in mind then there should be no negative SEO implications and you never know, your conversions from mobile users and referrals/shares from mobile users may increase above your competitors because you've taken time to give them a great experience.
Hope this helps - you're not dealing with small issues - we're in the middle of recoding our website for responsive web design, so all the best as you make these decisions.
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
-
How does Google rank a "Site:yourexamplesite.com" Query
Hi All, Sorry for the potentially confusing title. I am trying to find out how google ranks the pages of your site when you search "site:yourwebsite.com". When I did this with my website I was surprised what pages showed up on the first page, there were sub-category pages in the top 5 results and top level category pages that weren't on the first page. I have been unable to find information as to how google returns these results, is it the same algorithm/factors that make pages rank highly in a regular search, or does it have something to do with how recently google crawled these pages. Any feedback would be helpful. Additionally, if anyone has worked through a similar scenario I would be interested to know if there were any insights you gained from finding out which of your pages google returned first. Thanks for the help! Jason
Web Design | | Jason-Reid0 -
Will There Be Much Impact When Moving Site To New Root Folder?
Hi, ok so I have a pretty big site that is located on my sever /root/current-folder/. I want to rebuild the site completely as it's using software that is out of date and not our main focus anymore (OpenCart). We want to move to a Wordpress platform, but want to have as little impact on the SEO as possible. Our current strategy is: List all URLs/Titles/Meta indexed with Google on current site Create new folder on the server /root/new-folder/ My question is... if I move to a new folder on the server (same TLD) and then re-route the TLD to go to this new folder, will there be more of an impact on SEO that if I start a fresh in the current folder? Thanks
Web Design | | Easigrass0 -
Moving to new site. Should I take old blog posts with me?
Our company website has needed a complete overhaul for some time now and the new one is almost ready to go live. We also have a separate "news" site that is houses around 800 blog posts and news items. (That news site will be thrown away because it's on a completely different domain and causes confusion.) So we have a main site with about 100 decent blog posts and a separate news site with 800 poor posts. I plan on bringing all the main site blog posts over to the new site (both WordPress), but my question is whether or not to bring over the news site posts? All, handful, none? Another issue is the news site doesn't have Google Analytics, so I'm not sure if any posts actually generate traffic, but I can from the main site we do get some referrals from it. As far as quality of content goes, it's poor. Not sure who wrote it all, but it's mainly text press releases that aren't very interesting. Is it worth bringing over for SEO purposes or simply delete the site and create a mass redirect so all of those pages will direct to the new website's blog page? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | codyfrew0 -
How does adding ecommerce to a site affect SEO? What are the negative and what are the positives?
We are thinking of adding ecommerce to our website as a service to our customers. We generate most of our leads through online quote requests but heard that it may be beneficial to our SEO if we add ecommerce for a few products. Is this true? Does anyone have tips on best and worst SEO ecommerce practices?
Web Design | | TeguarMarketing0 -
Live website is an addon domain - Need site old development url inaccessable from live domain
Hi everyone, I have a website which is built in Joomla 2.5. The development site is located at www,abc.com/subdomain/. We have set the site live using an addon domain which is www.xyz.com. The problem is, www.abc.com/subdomain/ is still accessible and being crawled by Google. How is the best way to make the development url inaccessible? Any help would be appreciated!
Web Design | | DougHosmer0 -
Visits to Site and Serps?
Do google and bing factor in how many people visit your site per month to determine your serps rankings? If so, does it matter if they visit your site by searching a keyword phrase or by typing in the name in the search bar? My instinct tells me that if the search engine sees 1000 hits per month for a site by keyword phrase and that is high for the industry then they might rank that site higher in the serps. I was wondering if the same would be true if the site is designed and coded properly for a keyword phrase but receives the same 1000 hits per month from visitors typing in the sites name in the search field rather than the search phrase, would that then translate to higher rankings for the keyword phrase? Thanks for your help.
Web Design | | bronxpad0 -
Best Way To Have HD Videos On Site That Will Work On Mobile Devices
Hi, I hope someone can help me with this. I am working on a site for a client who works at a video production company. They want to have a fair few HD videos on there site but also for the site and videos to be viewable on mobile devices. I have got a responsive wordpress theme and the site is beginning to take shape. I am wondering however how I can best get the videos to display on mobile devices while maintaining a good load speed. Until now I have been using amazon S3 which stores and feeds the videos and I use Easyvideoplayer to embed the videos. The problem is they do not appear to show up from mobile devices when using wordpress. can anyone suggest the best way for me to still feed the videos from S3 but get them to display on mobile devices. oh, they are private videos so they cannot be placed on youtube.
Web Design | | jensonseo0 -
Mobile sites! Any advice or suggestions for building one?
Hello Mozland, I'm looking to have a mobile site built. We have a fair amount of traffic coming from smart phones, tablets etc and want to capture this traffic better. Do you have any advice on how to have it built properly, if/how it can be optimised, what good features to include, or anything else you think might be of help? Many thanks Martin
Web Design | | Martin_S0