Mobile web SEO questions

Hi,

I’m just getting into mobile web site development. I want to learn how to best deal with it from an SEO perspective and without damaging a non-mobile version of a site. And yes I’m aware that “regular” sites can be coded cleanly to render fairly the same on a mobile browser, but I still want an entirely separate site.

For example: Google does a separate search of .mobi domains right? So, if I create mydomain.com and mydomain.mobi with the same content, will I be penalized on either or both for replicating the same content?

I’ve seen people create mobile sites within the regular site too, such as m.mydomain.com or i.mydomain.com, but those won’t get listed on mobile only search results right?

So what is the best approach to create a mobile accessible site in addition to a regular site, considering best SEO practices?

Thanks guys!

Google isn’t going to penalize you for having the same content on your .com and .mobi. Don’t worry there. That being said, I’m not sure there’s much difference between using a mobile.domain.com and domain.mobi. It’s really just a matter of preference. You may have more room for expansion though if you use .mobi as you could setup something like touch.domain.mobi and bb.domain.mobi to identify between different mobile types.

A good resource to convert your current site into a mobile device friendly format is Skweezer.com. Simply enter your website’s URL, and it will display your website in a mobile-friendly version by removing large images, CSS styles and page elements that will not display properly.

Personally, I just create a mobile.domain.com but that’s clearly not the only way to do it.

Thanks guys. Anything else I should know?

smarsh, I wouldn’t bother with a dot mobi (being perfectly honest), most consumers don’t even know they exist, that said I would be tempted to place the mobile version on a subdomain of your main site (like m.yoursite.com), Google and other search engines will index the subdomain but won’t consider it duplicate (as it’s from the same host). My advice would be if you have a lot of content, try and compress the content into more of a summary, remember that with mobile designs bandwidth is a serious issue (along with scrolling), if you have a summarised amount of content it’ll not only be unique, it’ll load faster for your visitors. :slight_smile:

I do agree with Alex, when it comes to mobile sites…they should be lighter than normal websites, dont use excessive images, use them little as possible and when needed. The search results wont differ from web and mobile sites.

Thanks guys. I remember some post somewhere about detecting a mobile device and if memory serves me :eek: Alex you made a point that device specific detection is unreliable. (???)

So if I use a m.domain.com area for a mobile (sub)site, how do I direct mobile users to it and not the “regular” home page? I saw something somewhere about javascript to detect screen resolution. (???) Or what’s the best practice?

I agree with Alex that it’s not 100% reliable because there could be a user agent that hasn’t been coded into your script, but you’re going to catch 99.5% of the mobile browsers.

http://mobiforge.com/developing/story/lightweight-device-detection-php

That’s the detection script I’ve used and haven’t had any problems. I’ve had loads of friends with different phones test and all seems to work great. It’s written in PHP but if that’s not your language of choice it can be easily adapted.

I see that the detection script is about 2-1/2 years old. It’s still valid for detecting the latest phones?

I just used the detection script a few weeks ago and it’s detecting my new Android. I haven’t had any problems.

brandculture [dot] com

Feel free to test it yourself.

Can’t argue w/that. Thanks Jeff.

Now… anyone know of a mobile template (not a service) for Joomla?

I found this, it might be helpful: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/core-enhancements/mobile

Yeah… no real solutions there yet. Thanks.

I think this will answer your questions on duplicate content.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66359