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How to Implement a Mobile Website That Ranks in Google
To succeed with mobile SEO today, your site needs to at least work on mobile devices. So if mobile visitors get hit with a mini version of your desktop site, you’re in trouble. Fortunately, implementing a mobile website isn’t hard or complicated. And in this chapter I’m going to lay out a few different ways that you can implement a mobile version of your website (with a focus on SEO for mobile).
When It Comes to Mobile, You’ve Got 3 Options
There are 3 different ways to configure your site for mobile.
1. First, you’ve got Separate URLs (this is also known as an “M.” configuration).
With this setup, you have the “main” desktop version of your site. You also have a mobile version (“M.”) version of your site.
In other words, your site figures out what device your visitor is using… and then directs them to a URL optimized for that device. Separate URLs were popular back in the day. Today? Not so much. Why? First, they’re a huge pain to manage.
Also, “M.” sites have a host of SEO issues (like the fact that you need multiple URLs for every piece of content on your site AND that it requires complicated “rel=canonical” and “rel=alternate” tags). In short, I DON’T recommend a separate URLs/”M.” configuration. It’s by far the worst way to configure your site for mobile SEO.
2. Next up, we have Dynamic Serving.
When you serve content dynamically, all of your content is on the same URL. But you show each user different HTML/CSS depending on the device they’re using.
For example, if you visit https://backlinko.com/seo-tools on a desktop, you’d get served a pre-made desktop version of the site:
But if you visit the page from your iPhone 8, you’d still be on https://backlinko.com/seo-tools, but would get shown the “iPhone 8” version of the page: Dynamic serving is definitely better for SEO than having an “M.” version of your site. But it has issues.
For example, dynamic serving sites are notorious for showing desktop versions to mobile users. You also need to constantly create different versions of your content for new devices that come out. If you don’t, your site may not recognize a new device… and show them a version that looks terrible on that device. In short, I DON’T recommend serving dynamic versions of your pages to mobile visitors. Instead, I recommend…
3. Finally, we have Responsive Design.
I saved the best for last. With Responsive Design, your page’s layout and content responds to each individual user.
The best part? Responsive design pulls this off without separate URLs or different HTML for each device. In terms of being SEO-friendly, Responsive Design blows all other options out of the water.
Why? In short:
- All of your content is on a single URL (good for sharing and getting links)
- Minimal SEO headaches (no “rel=canonical tags” etc.)
- Insanely user friendly (UX is a big part of SEO )
- No redirects (which cause technical SEO issues and can slow down your site)
And if you’re still not convinced, Google recommends responsive layouts. So there.
