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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!

Hi,

Overall I would agree with Tommy (with the caveat that as far as I know, social signals are not a factor for search algorithms). But I'm a little concerned about so many internal links. Is the page actually that important to the site, or are you only linking for SEO purposes? You have lots of internal links and (from what I saw) no external links to the page.

My question is why you have two pages at all. It looks like the content varies slightly, but is there a reason why you can't use a single page for this? You don't want two pages competing for the same keyword.

If you do want to keep both pages for UX purposes, I'd recommend canonicalising one to the other (in which case the canonical version should receive the ranking benefits of the other one so it should continue to rank).

Hi,

I'd agree with both Dave and Tommy but also would suggest you rewrite your on-page copy to make it more clearly about dolls' houses and dolls' house accessories. At the moment it sounds a bit like a random collection of keywords, for example:

"With such a huge choice of**: Accessories, Books, Dolls, Figurines, Houses, Basements, Flooring, Glues & Scenic Materials, 12 volt Lighting & LED Lighting, Mouldings, Stairs, Plans, Play Houses, Roofing, Windows** and Doors there is sure to be something that will appeal." etc.

While I as a human reader can tell that these are all accessories for a dolls house, taken as individual terms they don't seem to have much relationship to each other (in terms of targeting). This is a top level category page targeting the term 'dolls' house'. So that should be your main keyword/topic.

Also a couple of those terms ('Books' and 'Flooring') are links which looks a bit weird with the exact match anchor text (esp since they are actually 'dolls' house/miniature books' and 'dolls' house flooring'.)

Hi Michelle,

You should use the 'switchboard tags', the special mobile canonical tag, when you have a mobile page which is a (duplicate) 'mobile version' of a desktop page.

This allows your mobile version to display in mobile search results, and your desktop version to display in desktop search results. It also indicates to Google that the mobile version is a duplicate version designed for mobile devices, rather than being simply duplicate content.

If you have a noindexed desktop page, and don't want the mobile version indexed either, you shouldn't need the canonical, just treat the mobile version the same as you would the desktop version.

If you have mobile-only content, with no corresponding desktop version, you can treat it the same as any other page; you don't need to add a canonical.

Hi,

If you have a separate mobile site with separate URLs, you shouldn't use regular canonicals, you should use the mobile version, called switchboard tags. This will indicate to Google that your mobile version is a mobile version and not simply duplicate content. You do want Google to be able to index your mobile pages as they have a separate smartphone crawler and a mobile index.

To implement switchboard tags:

On the desktop page, add:

and on the mobile page, the annotation should be:

This rel="canonical" tag on the mobile URL pointing to the desktop page is required.

As far as the nofollow question: What I would recommend is that you redirect mobile user agents (which will include the Googlebot for Smartphone) to the mobile version (most relevant page, not just homepage) and redirect desktop user agents landing on your mobile pages to the desktop version. Always include an option to 'view desktop version' or 'view mobile version' so that users can choose to override the redirect. That link should also take the user to the desktop/mobile version of that page, not just the homepage.

Hope that helps!

Hi Casey,

It sounds like you're using dynamic serving, rather than pure responsive design. The difference is that, while both approaches keep a single URL for mobile and desktop users, a responsive approach also keeps the same HTML and simply uses CSS to rearrange content on the page to fit a smaller screen; dynamic serving allows you to actually serve different HTML based on user agent.

The main thing to do for dynamic serving is to make sure you use a Vary HTTP User Agent header, to indicate to Google that you are not cloaking but rather are serving different content based on user agent to provide a mobile-friendly experience.

You can find more info on this here: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details

Hi Jason,

The difference is:

a mobile sitemap is a sitemap showing the URLs of your separate mobile pages.

the mobile annotation you mentioned above, for the regular desktop sitemap, is just a way of indicating that there is an alternate version of the desktop page for mobile users (it's basically serving the same purpose as the rel=alternate 'switchboard' tags that go in the desktop page's HTML). You would still need to include the rel=canonical switchboard tag annotation in the mobile page's HTML.

Hope that helps!

Hi, I'm wondering what implementation you used for the rel=canonical? I'm very surprised to hear that adding the tags negatively impacted the mobile site's ranking in the mobile SERPs; all it should have done is change the URL to the m. version.

I would not recommend the workaround you suggested, as redirecting a ranking and indexed page to a noindexed page (let alone several noindexed pages) will most likely cause confusion for the crawler.

Hi JBlank,

My solution to this is to ask whether you actually should be using the switchboard tags on all your desktop pages?

Switchboard tags (which are basically a special version of rel=canonical for mobile), are meant to indicate to a search engine that the two pages contain (near-)duplicate content, but that it's ok because one is a mobile version of the other. If the content is not substantially the same, you don't need to have a switchboard tag (just like with the normal rel=canonical).

So my recommendation:

• are any of your mobile pages direct or near-direct duplicates of your desktop pages? If so, use the switchboard tags for those desktop pages. You should also implement redirects in both directions based on user agent so that people land on the version most relevant to them. (And include the option to switch to the other version).

• for the other desktop pages, which may relate to certain mobile pages but which are not at risk of being classed as duplicate content, you can simply ignore them, and allow mobile users to land on a non-mobile-friendly page; or you can redirect mobile visitors to the most relevant page on the mobile site (again, with the option to switch to the 'full site').

If you actually have multiple desktop pages which are so similar that they could both have a rel=alternate tag to the same mobile page, that's probably a separate issue.

If you're concerned about ranking for deep desktop content in mobile search, I'm afraid the most sustainable solution is to develop that content into a more mobile-friendly format.

Hope that helps!

Hi Sara,

The tool Tom suggested sounds good, although I haven't used it personally.

A couple things I do to check mobile site response time:

• Google Pagespeed Insights is really good and provides recommendations for how to improve page speed.

• If you're using a Chrome browser, you can also use the right-click 'Inspect element' feature to view the load timeline.

• In 'Settings' (the cog in the lower right corner) choose 'Overrides' > 'User Agent' and select a mobile user agent. (NB: you can skip this step for a separate mobile site with a URL different to the desktop site if you're able to access the actual mobile site via a desktop)
• Exit the 'Settings' overlay and choose the 'Network' tab. There is a 'Timeline' column which shows the time each element of the site took to load.

Hope that helps!

Hi,

Saijo and Bradley are right in saying that hiding elements on a smaller screen should not be an issue (as it's a correct implementation of responsive design). Bear in mind as well that there is a Googlebot and a Smartphone Googlebot, so as long as the Googlebot is seeing what desktop users see and the Smartphone Googlebot (which uses an iPhone5 user agent) is seeing what mobile users see, it shouldn't be a problem.

The only thing I would add:

If you are going to use display:none to prevent a user from seeing something when they view your site, it's good to include an option to 'view full site' or 'view desktop site'. Also in that case I would question whether you actually need that content on the desktop site at all? Because best practice is to provide all the same content regardless of device.

If it's hidden but still accessible to the mobile user (in a collapsible div for instance) there's no cloaking involved so it shouldn't cause a problem.

As a side note: the Vary HTTP header is really for a dynamically served website (that is, a single URL which checks user agent and then serves the desktop HTML to desktop devices and mobile HTML to mobile devices).

Hope that helps!

Hi Edward,

Schema tags are intended to a) indicate with more granularity what a given element is on a page (e.g. 'review', 'recipe', 'video file', etc.), and b) this information can sometimes be used by Google for rich snippets in the SERPs. So whether you need to include these tags in the mobile version of your header will depend on what they are describing. If the code for the header is different for the desktop and mobile versions, but you do have the same element and you do want the schema tags to be there, you'll need to include them; if the element which you're marking up in the desktop header isn't present in the mobile header, don't include them.

There aren't currently (to my knowledge) specific Schema tags which indicate a 'mobile site'. (The ones that Robert mentioned seem to be for marking up a page featuring a mobile app). If you had a separate URL for mobile visitors, such as m.domain.com, you would need a mobile 'rel=canonical' tag to avoid duplicate content but that doesn't sound like it's the case for your site.

It sounds to me like you're using dynamic serving, rather than a pure responsive design. (pure responsive only changes the CSS whereas dynamic serving keeps the same URL but serves up different HTML based on user agent). If this is the case, you'll also want to include a vary HTTP header based on user agent. (the Google guidelines for how to do this are here.) This indicates to Google that you are serving a different HTML based on user agent, and not cloaking.

Hope that helps!

Hi bizzer,

Everyone should ideally have a mobile-friendly website, because the percentage of people accessing your site on mobile devices will only continue to increase. And if you already have a Wordpress site, switching to a responsive theme is a great way to achieve that. But...as you note, there are other considerations, such as potentially lost rankings.

Only you know how much of a drop you can afford. It's a short-term sacrifice for long-term results.

Generally speaking, my recommendation would always be that if you can possibly do it, you should. And Miki and Moosa made some good suggestions above for how to minimise the negative impact somewhat. Combined with good technical SEO going into the new source code, you should hopefully be able to regain your position fairly quickly.

To answer your follow-up question: we don't know for sure, but it seems likely that having a mobile-friendly website could be a quality factor, whether now or later. Google have certainly discussed best practice guidelines for mobile, which seems to indicate that a good mobile experience is something which they care about. Apart from anything else, ~60% of mobile users will bounce if they land on a non-mobile-friendly site and go to a competitor, so that in itself will send a negative signal if you have a significant amount of mobile traffic. (and 15-20% isn't too shabby - even if some of that is tablet traffic, a responsive design will provide a better experience for them as well).

Hope that helps!

Hi Keith,

I'd recommend starting by compressing the images (if you haven't already). You mentioned that you've had trouble shrinking the images responsively, but you should be able to use a plugin like WP Smush.it. Compressing images is good for desktop site speed as well.

I'd agree with Bradley's CSS recommendation to fix the sizing issue; and for load time you can use CSS image sprites to combine multiple images.

I don't necessarily think that there's a problem with checking for the user-agent, and serving a different version of your images, but as Bradley pointed out, they still need to look good on a high res screen.

Cloud Four wrote a couple posts that go more in-depth into ways of dealing with responsive images (although these are not specifically Wordpress solutions):

• http://blog.cloudfour.com/responsive-imgs-part-2/ (from 2011)
• http://blog.cloudfour.com/8-guidelines-and-1-rule-for-responsive-images/ (from 2013)

You might also want to consider consolidating and minifying your CSS and Javascript files if you're concerned about page load time. Here's an article with these and a couple other tips: http://searchengineland.com/how-to-tune-up-responsive-design-websites-to-improve-mobile-seo-124370

Hope that helps!

Hi IMM,

What page are you trying to fix? And what did you change in the robots.txt file to fix it?

Hi Pugh,

Glad to hear it! Yes, you should also implement the tag on your homepages.

Hi Pugh,

It sounds like you haven't implemented the rel=canonical tag for mobile. This tag works a bit like the hreflang tag, namely it prevents your mobile site from being viewed as duplicate content and should mean that your mobile URL is displayed in mobile SERPs and your desktop URL is displayed in desktop SERPs.

To implement (for more info see https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details

on the desktop page, add:

and on the **corresponding **mobile page, the required annotation should be:

This rel="canonical" tag on the mobile URL pointing to the desktop page is required.

Make sure you are referencing the corresponding URLs (so www.example.com/xyz and m.example.com/xyz, rather than simply referencing the mobile homepage).

Hope that helps!