Why mobi version of the file comes up higher on SERPs when compared to the web version?

[greyniumseo]

hi

Please see the URL http://news.oneindia.in/2011/10/22/tech-gmail-to-get-a-makeover-soon-google.html
The corresponding mobile version is http://news.oneindia.mobi/2011/10/22/886893.html

If we search for "Google video leaks; Gmail to get a make over soon" on Google the mobi version comes up instead of the web version. One reason could be because of the browser title. We do use meta title in our web version of the article.

For the past few months our mobi version of the file comes up higher on SERPs when compared to the web version. What could be the reason?

regards

[deltasystems]

Hi there!

The specific reason why it ranks higher could be any number of things. I'll go over several items you should be aware of if you aren't already.

Are you currently redirecting all visitors with mobile user agent strings to the mobile version? You should be. There is a video by Matt Cutts that says Googlebot will be able to differentiate between mobile/regular pages in doing so. He does recommend using the "m" subdomain like you are currently doing. There will be no duplicate content/cloaking issues.

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Now let's think of what would make one website rank over another. Links, right? If we take a look at your mobile site compared to a regular article page, we see what every visitor wants to see: content. There are no advertisements, no busy navigation menus, nothing: just the content they want to share. Wouldn't it make sense to share the mobile version then? This could lead to visitors linking to your mobile version instead of the regular. (Try optimizing your mobile design more so there is less of a distinction in this case)

Are you linking to your mobile site in any shape or form? The mobile version has less outbound links. As such, the authority it receives from any links you have up will be retained more easily than your regular article page, which has quite a few outbound links.

Can you draw any conclusions from SEOmoz tools to see a difference between the two pages?

Lastly, use the mobile XHTML doctype instead of the one you currently have. It helps Google differentiate between the two pages:

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Best of luck! Let me know if you have questions.

[greyniumseo]

Zac,

Thanks for the detailed response. While I haven't yet fully analyzed what you have asked us to do, few points,

1. We are using "mobi" instead of "m.", so the two domains are totally distinct. Is this a bad strategy.

2. The headers in the web and mobile version have a meta tag to point to the other version of the article (link media=handheld, link media=screen)

3. Which SEOmoz tools do we need to use to compare the two pages (we are new to seomoz)

4. One concern we have: Google quickly crawls our mobi site but not our web version of the article. We don't see any offending warnings on Google webmaster tools

5. We will do the xhtml thingy today

regards

Mahesh