Mobile & desktop pages

[Humix]

I have a mobile site (m.example.com) and a desktop site (example.com). I want search engines to know that for every desktop page there is a mobile equivalent. To do this I insert a rel=alternate on the desktop pages to the mobile equivalent. On the mobile pages I insert a rel=canonical to it's equivalent desktop page. So far so good BUT:

Almost every desktop page has 4 or 5 copies (duplicate content). I get rid of this issue by using the rel=canonical to the source page. Still no problem here.

But what happens if I insert a rel=alternate to the mobile equivalent on every copy of the source page? I know it sounds stupid but the system doesn't allow me to insert a rel=alternate on just one page. It's all or nothing!

My question:

Does Google ignore the rel=alternate on the duplicate pages but keeps understanding the link between the desktop source page  & mobile page  ? Or should I avoid this scenario?

Many Thanks

Pieter

[RobertFisher]

Humix,

I do not believe it would cause you a problem to have it on every copy of the source page; When you say the "system" won't allow you to place on just main source page, what do you mean?

Robert

[Humix]

Thanks a lot for the answer! To answer yours; If we want to insert a rel=alternate (or any tag) on the source page it's automatically added in it's copies. We can work around it but asks a lot of work and budget. Don't ask me why/how or the details, the only thing I know for sure is that it wasn't build for SEO ;).

Pieter

[RobertFisher]

I put this down on paper and cannot see a way it is harmful. I am assuming there is more than one source page topic:

Site is Bikes, categories are wheels, handlebars, chains.

Pages are Bikes/wheels/red, blue, green

Bike/wheel/red = one source page, Bike/wheel/blue = one source page, etc. EDIT - each of these pages has multiple versions

If so, I would change half the source pages and just watch for a week. (Fetch as Google after changing - immediately so you have likelihood of quick reindex)

If you see nothing negative, implement rel=alt for all the other wheels

Does that seem clear?

[David-Kley]

We use the mobile pages for users only, and set them to "no-index". There is no reason for increased SEO (that I am aware of) to have both a m. and a www. version of a page indexed in Google. If you have a desktop page full of good conetnt, and it is in your sitemap, Google will find it. What you want to do is have the server detect the device the user is accessing the site from, and display the mobile or tablet version. IMO this is to help the user to navigate your site easier, not to get a seo boost by having more pages or showing Google you have mobile-specific pages.

Also, add this to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile
Allow: /
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Allow: /

[RobertFisher]

David,

I would not suggest this as there are separate mobile search results. I think you are taking a risk with no-indexing your mobile pages. You are better served to use rel=alternate IMO. 
Best,

[Humix]

David, what i'm trying to reach is this:

On the desktop page I add this between my

<linkrel="alternate"media="only screen="" and="" (max-width:="" 640px)" href="http://m.example.com/page-1"></linkrel="alternate"media="only>

On the mobile page I add this between my

<link< span="">rel="canonical"href="http://www.example.com/page-1"></link<>

In this way i'm saying to search engines that for this desktop URL an alternate mobile URL is available. The desktop URL is the one that will get in to the search results ( based on the canonical on the mobile URL) and users will be served the desktop or mobile page depending on the device they're using ("media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)". In this way duplicate issues are countered.

Besides this I have multiple copies of the my desktop URL. Thes copies get the right canonical to the source page. But when I want to add the rel=alternate to my source, they also are added to my copies of the desktop URL. (The system in which i'm working doesn't allow me to do otherwise)

I made a scheme of this (see image). I'm concerned that the rel=alternate on the desktop's copy URL's may cause problems to achieve the above.

@Robert: Thanks for the input, clear to me. I will test it!

EG0VJnX.png?1?9008

[David-Kley]

We did an in-depth study last year to see if setting the mobile pages to "no-index" had any effect. This was done on one of our biggest sites. What we found is that if a site ranks high in desktop results, Google will display the same results in mobile, even if location targeting is turned on in the mobile device.

The only thing that skewed the results is if something relevant was within a few miles, and even then it was few and far between that it showed a difference. We even tried doing the same searches with having our location set to a completely different town or city, and got the same results.

Test was conducted using hotspots, wifi, 4g, 3g and multiple devices so we were not using the same IP. I understand what you are saying, I just don't think it has as large of an impact as people think.

[RobertFisher]

I would love to see any of it you are willing to share. I am not saying in any way it is an absolute (what is in SEO?), I just worry over not indexing a page for mobile.

Best