Mobile site backlinks?

[lfrazer]

Hello,

Our mobile site redirects to desktop in a desktop browser and vice versa; however, they are different sites. This said, shouldn't the backlinks for our mobile site be the same as for our desktop site since one redirects to the other. We show no backlinks in my analysis? Any help or insight would be extremely appreciated!

Thank you!

[DirkC]

Hi,

Did you properly set-up the configuration of both sites (see https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/configurations/separate-urls?hl=en)?

Unless the links are specifically made to the mobile version, they will not appear in Webmastertools. The links from the desktop version will however count as well for the mobile version as Google considers both url's as the same entity (if set-up is done as described above)

rgds,

Dirk

[lfrazer]

Hi Dirk,

Thanks for your quick response! We don't have the canonical: alternate on each page; however, in the "lib/functions" file, I manually entered the relationship between the mobile version url and the desktop version url; and defaulted all others to the homepage. Shouldn't this work the same? If not, how to I best approach this in Dreamweaver? Thanks again!!!!

[DirkC]

Hi Denise,

Unfortunately not that technical - but a bit scary of the remark 'defaulted all others to the homepage' - it sounds a lot like the 'common mistakes' on this page: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/common-mistakes/faulty-redirects?hl=en

Isn't your mobile site a 1-1 copy of the desktop version?

Are you using a CMS or is your site plain HTML. If you manage the pages in Dreamweaver - you can add the rel="alternate" in the section of your HTML. If it's a CMS, you'll probably need to Google a bit to find out how you can implement it.

rgds,

Dirk

[lfrazer]

Hi Dirk,

Our mobile site is a lot smaller than our desktop version, so where there was a relationship, we employed the 1:1; but if the mobile did not have the correlating page, we did redirect to the homepage. I'm not sure we have the time to create a page in mobile for all of our desktop pages. That being said, what is our next step?

Thanks

[DirkC]

In that case I would certainly not redirect to home - but just keep the desktop page. It's better to serve a non-optimised desktop page with the appropriate content than to send visitors to a non-related mobile homepage. If you have limited time - I would concentrate on your main search landing pages and your most popular pages in general- try to make mobile versions of these ones. You can always work on the rest of the content after Apr. 21st.

For the pages where you have the 1-1 I would do the rel alternate as advised by Google.

rgds,

Dirk

[lfrazer]

Thanks so much Dirk. Your have been extremely helpful!

[lfrazer]

sorry but now I am being told that we cannot implement the alternate to canonical because we have a default header with no page delineation for (it pulls from somewhere else). as I am an seo and not a programmer, I at a loss as to implement this. Thoughts?

[DirkC]

Try to check the pages which are currently 1-1 - do the mobile friendly check for the desktop version. If it passes - you should be ok. If not - you'll have to hand it over to the technical dept & ask them to search for a solution. If necessary, escalate (depends on the % of mobile searches you currently have & the importance of the website for your business)

rgds,

Dirk