Moving from M. to Responsive: Rel Alternate Considerations
-
Hey Guys,
We’re in the process of transitioning our key traffic generating pages on our website from m. to responsive.
Today, our site uses Google’s ‘Separate URLs’ method.
- Rel alternate on desktop pages to m. pages
- 302 redirects pushing mobile visitors to m. pages
- Canonical on m. pages back to desktop pages
As we make the transition to responsive we’ll be taking the following steps:
- Removal of 302 redirects pushing mobile visitors to m. pages
- 301 redirects from m. pages to desktop pages
With those changes in mind, I’d love to get the communities opinion on how to best handle the real alternate attribute on desktop pages.
I'm considering leaving the rel alternate attribute in place on desktop pages for 30-90 days so that search engines continue to see the alternate version without the 302 redirects in place, crawl it, and as a result discover the 301 redirects more readily.
If we remove the 302 redirects as well as the rel alternate, then my feeling is that search engines would just index the responsive page accordingly and be less likely to catch the 301 redirects pointing from the m. pages and make the transition of mobile pages in search indices take longer than necessary.
Ultimately, I'm probably splitting hairs and getting a bit nuanced because I believe things will work themselves out whether we leave the rel alternate or remove it but I thought it would be great to get any opinions or thoughts from community members that have made a similar transition.
Thanks in advance for stopping by and providing your thoughts.
All the best,
JonPS - for your reference, the only mention that I was able to dig up in Q&A for a move from m. to responsive are the following:
-
I think this is great! I agree with all of your thought process. I wish all migrations could be this thorough
It looks like you posted this question a little while ago though, so if you've already started the process I'd love to hear how it's going!
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
-
Google Mobile site crawl returns poorer results on 100% responsive site
Has anyone experienced an issue where Google Mobile site crawl returns poorer results than their Desktop site crawl on a 100% responsive website that passes all Google Mobile tests?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MFCommunications0 -
Content Strategy/Duplicate Content Issue, rel=canonical question
Hi Mozzers: We have a client who regularly pays to have high-quality content produced for their company blog. When I say 'high quality' I mean 1000 - 2000 word posts written to a technical audience by a lawyer. We recently found out that, prior to the content going on their blog, they're shipping it off to two syndication sites, both of which slap rel=canonical on them. By the time the content makes it to the blog, it has probably appeared in two other places. What are some thoughts about how 'awful' a practice this is? Of course, I'm arguing to them that the ranking of the content on their blog is bound to be suffering and that, at least, they should post to their own site first and, if at all, only post to other sites several weeks out. Does anyone have deeper thinking about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Moving to a new domain for second time - critical, help needed fast!
Hello, Important: please do not ask why we need to change the domain, its not the matter at all, thank you for understanding. Over a month ago we successfully changed our domain name, 301 redirected, did GWT 'change of address' and all. The old domain was 2 years old, ranking very well, the new domain change of address was a success and traffic back on the new domain after a week. Today we need to change the domain name again, unfortunately, for some reasons, we have to, however we are not sure what to do in GWT, when I went to 'change of address' in the domain (the new first domain), i saw the following message (screenshot attached too): This site is undergoing a move Old URL | New URL If any URL on the left should not be moved, you can withdraw its move request. To do this, click the URL and then Withdraw. Now our questions: 1. For second time moving to a new domain, we should move from the old first domain (301 from the first old domain) or from the second domain (301 from the second domain)? 2. If from the old first domain, should we Withdraw from the first domain (lift up the first change of address in GWT) and then redirect the old first domain to the second new domain (the one we want to move now)? If yes, what to do with the first new domain (the one which we moved to a month ago) 3. If we should move from the first new domain, then what to do? The situation is clear but confusing what to do? It's just that we need to change the domain name again, move to a new one, for the second time, now we should redirect from the first old domain or first new domain? I purchased MOZ just to get help from you guys here, the only place i thought I could be helped. Of course gonna use Moz service too now that i have puurchased it 🙂 Awaiting your quick help guys. Thank you! 8csVpOZ2QoiYCoTR1t_SnQ.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mdmoz0 -
I'm stumped!
I'm hoping to find a real expert to help out with this. TL;DR Our visibility in search has started tanking and I cannot figure out why. The whole story: In fall of 2015 I started working with Convention Nation (www.conventionnation.com). The client is trying to build a resource for convention and tradeshow attendees that would help them identify the events that will help them meet their goals (learning, networking, sales, whatever). They had a content team overseas that spent their time copy/pasting event information into our database. At the time, I identified several opportunities to improve SEO: Create and submit a sitemap Add meaningful metas Fix crawl errors On-page content uniqueification and optimization for most visible events (largest audience likely to search) Regular publishing and social media Over nine months, we did these things and saw search visibility, average rank and CTR all double or better. There was still one problem, and that is created by our specific industry. I'll use a concrete example: MozCon. This event happens once a year and there are enough things that are the same about it every year (namely, the generalized description of the event, attendees and outcomes) that the 2015 page was getting flagged as a duplicate of 2016. The event content for most of our events was pretty thin anyway, and much of it was duplicated from other sources, so we implemented a feature that grouped recurring events. My thinking was that this would reduce the perception of duplicate or obsolete content and links and provide a nice backlink opportunity. I expected a dip after we deployed this grouping feature, that's been consistent with other bulk content changes we've made to the site, but we are not recovering from the dip. In fact, our search visibility and traffic are dropping every week. So, the current state of things is this: Clean crawl reports: No errors reported by Moz or Google Moz domain authority: 20; Spam score 2/17 We're a little thin on incoming links, but steady growth in both social media and backlinks Continuing to add thin/duplicate content for unique events at the rate of 200 pages/mo Adding solid, unique strategic content at the rate of 15 pages/mo I just cannot figure out where we've gone astray. Is there anything other than the thin/copied content that could be causing this? It wasn't hurting us before we grouped the events... What could possibly account for this trend? Help me, Moz Community, you're my only hope! Lindsay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LindsayDayton0 -
Penguin hit Website - Moving to new domain
Hey! I am working on a Penguin hit Website. Still ranking for all brand keywords and blog articles are still being returned in Google SERPs, but the website is showing up for only 3 or 4 money keywords. It is clearly a penguin hit as it was ranked 1st page for all money keywords before latest update (3.0). We already did a link cleanup and disavowed all bad backlinks. Still, the recovery process could take over 2 years from previous experience, and in 2 years, the site will suffer a slow death. Solution: We own the .com version of the domain, currently being served on the .net. We bought the .com version about 6 years ago, it is clean and NOT redirected to the .net (actual site). We were thinking about moving the whole Website to the .com version to start over. However, we need to make sure Google doesn't connect the 2 sites (no pagerank flow). Of course Google will notice is the same content, but there won't be any pagerank flowing from the old site to the new one. For this, we thought about the following steps: Block Googlebot (and only googlebot) for the .net version via robots.txt. Wait until Google removes all URLs from the index. Move content to the .com version. Set a 301 redirect from .net to .com (without EVER removing the block on googlebot). Thoughts? Has anyone went over this before? Other ideas? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FedeEinhorn0 -
Moving low ranking domain
I have a website, that I rewrote great content for, but I recently found that there are many, many links going to the subdomain that may be pulling it down. Has anyone had experience taking down a site and then moving the content to a new site? Will it be considered duplicate content if you completely take the old site down and use rel="canonical" on new site pages? I don't want to lose the good content, but I cannot have it on the current URL with all the bad backlinking (it's a complicated situation, as I need to keep those backlinks which are affiliates). Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
Alternative links in the search results.
Hello, This is a short question Please look at this SERP screenshot: http://imgur.com/1EMen Who do they get the other links under their results. Cornel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cornel_Ilea0 -
Should I be using rel canonical here?
I am reorganizing the data on my informational site in a drilldown menu. So, here's an example. One the home page are several different items. Let's say you clicked on "Back Problems". Then, you would get a menu that says: Disc problems, Pain relief, paralysis issues, see all back articles. Each of those pages will have a list of articles that suit. Some articles will appear on more than one page. Should I be worried about these pages being partially duplicates of each other? Should I use rel-canonical to make the root page for each section the one that is indexed. I'm thinking no, because I think it would be good to have all of these pages indexed. But then, that's why I'm asking!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0