Transitioning to responsive design--should we re-direct m.?
-
We are moving to responsive design--should we 301 re-direct all of the old m.domain URLs to the corresponding domain.com
-
Very well elaborated, maybe I should have done so myself in my original response.
Always try 301 to relevant pages in this situation but if the redirect rules prove a headache (and the site has little to no inbound links) to create then I would simply remove the subdomain and 301 to main domain homepage. Somewhat of a Time vs Overall Benefit issue, or in some cases a Cost vs Benefit issue.
If the m.domain variant has links pointing to it then it's always beneficial to 301 the links the refering sites are pointing to - I'd try to do this as an absolute minimum in this situation.
It is common for mobile versions of sites have no links pointing to them apart from redirects from the main site so in that situation a 301would likely have zero affect whatsoever.
-
I would 2nd William's response here. If there are any links/bookmarks pointing to your mobile pages, you'll want those 301s in the long term. And short term, any pages Googlebot mobile has indexed that are getting mobile search referrals will pass those users along accordingly (and signal to Google to update their index).
In short, yes - 301s would be the way to go.
One caveat: if it's a big undertaking to do this (if you can't match all subdomain requests with a .htaccess redirect pattern and you have a ton of pages, for example) I'd first take a look at the mobile search traffic, referral traffic and inbound links to your m. subdomain. This way you can determine how much you'll be losing out on if you don't set up the 301s. If your mobile site is new enough, not getting a tremendous amount of traffic and has no direct referral sources or inbound links, you may be able to get away without 301ing. I'd probably still push for them though.
-
Redirecting the old mobile version of your site to the new responsive design with 301 redirects would pass on any page authority to the corresponding page on domain.com and a responsive design is generally superior in terms of UX.
In my opinion it would be good practice to forward from an exiting mobile version to a new responsive version as per the serve one page to all devices guideline. Using a 301 redirect would be the correct way to do this.
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
-
Moving content to a newer domain - 301 re-direct not possible
I had a website that was getting decent traffic. Around 2k visits a day. Owing to some issues, the domain was suspended my the domain provider and they won't be releasing it anytime soon. Now, I'm in talks with my domain provider and it might take some good time to get back the domain live (weeks if not months). So, I have decided to migrate all my content to a new domain. Also, Google has stopped displaying my earlier domain (the suspended domain) in the search results now and I have removed the property from webmaster tools/search console. And since my earlier domain is suspended, redirection is not possible. So, I had a couple query in regards to this: I'm in the process of moving the content from the older suspended domain to the newer domain. What should I do that Google does not penalise my new site on the grounds of duplicate content, etc. What other things I should do while I'm in the process of this migration.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Evaway0 -
Google W.M.T Missing Meta Title on AJax Pages... Weird!!
Hey Mozers, I was looking through my Google Web Masters Tool under HTML Improvements. It looks like I have 2,200 pages missing Meta Titles and I was about to lose it thinking HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN! I came to realize that the pages were "Ajax Pages". This is specifically a checkprice pop up and I dont want this page crawled by google. It looks like to google I have over 2k pages missing Meta Titles and they are all "check price pop ups". How would you suggest I block this. I thought about going the easy route and removing the subfolder and putting it in the Robots.txt document and I'm scared of that because we use AJax for a bunch of calls. I'm also scared of putting in the head <metaname="robots" =="" noindex,nofollow"="">because it requires hard coding</metaname="robots"> I Know i'm not the first to come across this issue, Any Ideas??
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rpaiva0 -
508 compliance vs good SEO re: Image alt tags
I'm currently in debate with our 508 compliance team over the use of alt tags on images. For SEO, it is best practice to use alt tags so that readers can tell what the image represents. However, they are arguing that these images should NOT have alt text as it doesn't add anything to the disability screen reader as the image text would be repetitive with the text on the page. I feel they are taking the "decorative" image concept in 508 compliance too far. It's intention is for images for bullets, etc that truly are decorative in nature and add no benefit to the reader. What is the communities thoughts on this? Have you ever run into scenario where 508 is attempting to ruin SEO? Usually the 2 play nicely.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpfleiderer0 -
Is it worth changing themes to be Responsive, and risk a SERP change?
I've got a site that ranks #1 for it's term. It's Worpress on Thesis 1.85. The site is not responsive and cannot be because Thesis 1x is not (and Thesis 1x is a dead end). I really would like my site responsive, but I fear changing things might affect my #1 rank. The least impactful change I could do is move to Thesis 2.x, but I have come to really dislike the company and hate to get locked in again. There are other frameworks I would prefer to move to, but their impact on my pages' source would be much more. So, my question is, is it worth moving to a new theme (keeping the layout looking exactly the same, although the "source" would look different) just to make the site responsive? Is it that important?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
Blog content - what to do, and what to avoid in terms of links, when you're paying for blog content
Hi, I've just been looking at a restaurant site which is paying food writers to put food news and blogs on their website. I checked the backlink profile of the site and the various bloggers in question usually link from their blogs / company websites to the said restaurant to help promote any new blogs that appear on the restaurant site. That got me wondering about whether this might cause problems with Google. I guess they've been putting about one blog live per month for 2 years, from 12/13 bloggers who have been linking to their website. What would you advise?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Is a 301 Direct with a canonical tag Possible ?
Hi All, Quick question , Are we correct in thinking that for any given URL it's not possible to do a 301 redirect AND a canonical tag? thanks Sarah
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SarahCollins0 -
Latent Semantic Indexing and Direct Match Domains
I wondered if anyone had any opinions as to whether LSI plays any part in the ranking of a direct match domain? For example :- would www.search-engine-optimisation.com be more likely to rank better for search terms such as 'SEO Services' or 'SEO Experts' than www.some-random-domain.com Does having 'Search Engine Optimisation' in the domain name mean that you would rank better for 'SEO'?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis0 -
When is it worth re-structuring your site?
I recently started working on a site that is 8 years old and the currently URLs/ site structure is not SEO friendly. We are concerned that in re-structuring the site, we may loose our rankings. Has anyone ever completely re-structured their site? Was it worth it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0