What is Mobile SEO?

Mobile Search Engine Optimization is the process of designing a website to make it suitable

for viewing on mobile devices of different screen sizes and load times. A website is mobile

friendly if it has the following attributes:

· Its contents are easy to read on a mobile device without having to zoom the screen.

· It should be easy to navigate through the site on a small screen.

· Most important of all, it should show up in Google search results.

The ranking of a website depends heavily on how mobile friendliness it is.

Optimize Your Site for Mobile

If your site is already optimized for search engines, then it should not be too difficult to

optimize it for mobile devices. First, let us understand what it takes to go mobile. We can

categorize the steps into three broad categories:

1. Select a Mobile Configuration

2. Inform Google and other Search Engines

3. Avoid Common Mistakes

Select a Mobile Configuration

There are three different mobile configurations that you can choose from:

1. Responsive Web Design

2. Dynamic Serving

3. Separate URLs

Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Google recommends responsive design,

however it supports all three configurations. The following table shows how the mobile

configuration affects your URL and HTML code:

There are three different mobile configurations that you can choose from:

1. Responsive Web Design

2. Dynamic Serving

3. Separate URLs

Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Google recommends responsive design,

however it supports all three configurations. The following table shows how the mobile

configuration affects your URL and HTML code:

14. SEO ─ Mobile SEO

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Mobile Configuration

URL

HTML

Responsive Web Design

Stays the same

Stays the same

Dynamic Serving

Stays the same

Different HTMLs

Separate URLs

Different URLs

Different HTMLs

Responsive Web Design

Google recommends responsive web design become it is the simplest mobile configuration

and very easy to implement. It serves the same HTML code on the same URL, however it

adjusts the display based on the screen size of the mobile device.

Figure: Responsive Web Design

Dynamic Serving

Dynamic serving is a type of mobile configuration where the URL of your website remains

unchanged, but it serves different HTML content when accessed from a mobile device.

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Figure: Dynamic Serving

When your content is dynamically served from the server, make sure you inform Google

that the content it is crawling may look different on mobile devices.

Separate URLs

When you maintain two different URLs — one for mobile users and another for desktop

users – make sure you inform Google explicitly when to serve which version. Google does

not recommend separate URLs because it can detect automatically that your mobile pages

are different from your desktop pages.

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Figure: Separate URLs