Desktop & Mobile Sitemaps Covering The Same Ground - Any Benefit To Having Both?

[edmundsseo]

If my URL structure is the same for the desktop and mobile experience, is there any benefit to creating a mobile sitemap, considering that the sitemap for our desktop site covers the same URLs?

[Ron_McCabe]

John,

Yes! In search marketing today everything is about an edge. Anything you can do to make it easier for search engines to quantify that giving your company as a result is better increases the possibility that you get a higher ranking.  Well over 50% of search is on mobile devices today so serving this traffic well is a priority.  You should also take some time to look at your menu on mobile devices to see if they are organized in a way that would be convenient for a mobile user.  I would highly recommend getting a smart phone with a smaller screen to make sure the buttons are convenient to use.  Although these UI adjustments don't directly affect your rankings they do effect your user engagement which in turn decreases your bounce rate and improves your conversion rate.  This in turn is factored into your rankings.

Going back to my first argument I would recommend that If you have video or audio that you submit site maps for these as well.

Hope this helps,

Ron

[bridget.randolph]

Hi John,

When you say that the URLs have the same structure: do you mean that they are different URLs but organised the same way (e.g. www.domain.com is the same as m.domain.com, www.domain.com/page-1 is the sames as m.domain.com/page-1, etc)? Or is it a responsive site with the same URLs regardless of device?

The primary benefit of a sitemap is for discovery by the search engine crawlers. If you have a responsive site, you don't need a separate mobile sitemap. If you have a different set of URLs for mobile devices, even if it follows the same structure as the desktop site, I'd recommend creating a mobile sitemap.

Hope that helps!

[edmundsseo]

Yes, it's responsive design with the exact same URLs for both mobile and desktop.

Thanks for your helpful response!