Mobile Advice Help Needed For m. Subdomain Solution

[TheSuperStar]

Hi All,

I have a site which is written in old skool HTML by hand.

It is quite large, and has good rankings in google.

Ive been reading about the new google algo for mobile serps and am worried because the site is NOT mobile friendly.

As I understand it - there are two ways of becoming mobile friendly.

a) Make a responsive website.

As my business is heavily dependent on the current rankings - this is absolutely not an option at this time. Moving the old skool HTML to a Responsive CMS would trash my links coming to my pages, and would completely restructure the menu navigation I have in place.

The navigation is all over the show because the site grew manually over the last three years - but the site ranks and a restructure would be highly likely to decimate my placements in the serps. I would love to go to a responsive CMS - but just cannot risk losing everything.

b) Have an m. subdomain like this m.mydom.com

As I have to go this route, a couple of questions have come to my mind.

1. Does google not see the M. version as dupe content?
2. How does content on the M. get updated?
3. How do you populate the M. in the first place?
4. How does the webserver need configuring?
5. Will and M. solution satisfy googles mobile friendly requirements?

Thanks for your help.
The (not so mobile) superstar.

[aakk9999]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, TheSuperStar!

I will start with the first question of yours and hopefully others will chime in after that.

1. The content on m. subdomain will not be seen as a duplicate if you follow recommendations, which is:
a) The page on the m. subdomain must have rel canonical set to point to its equivalent page on the desktop domain
b) The equivalent page on the desktop domain must have rel alternate pointing to the page on the m. subdomain

[Rasputin]

You can make a site responsive without changing to a CMS, it is just the css that needs updating, in particular to use media queries.

Presumably if your whole site is html it either uses include type files for header, footer etc or failing that you can use find/ replace across all files to make changes relatively easily.

Start perhaps with bootstrap css and your own css file loading as well, and then change the html to use parts of the new bootstrap.css as time and testing permits.

Pay particular heed to the responsive utilities / grid system in bootstrap eg col-md-4 etc, this and media queries are key to the whole thing.

In the long term I am convinced this will be less work than running two separate versions of the site.

[TheSuperStar]

Thanks aakk9999 - sounds like quite a lot of manual work for me to do - just for that alone!

Rasputin - thanks for replying - lol - I stress - my site is "old skool" HTML. CSS isnt even in it - its nested tables!

I know - really bad. :/

[Swanny007]

I switched my second largest site from table-based layout to responsive about 2 weeks ago. My biggest disappointment was that I had to take my nav bar menu from 12 items to 6. I decided to just bite the bullet and do that because over 50% of my traffic is from mobile devices and I did not want to get ranked lower in Google because it was not mobile friendly.

I would only recommend responsive design because when done properly, you only have one copy of any page to maintain. I realize there are cases to go with a separate m. site but if you do something wrong you can really be demoted in Google (duplicate content penalty). Responsive is easier to maintain long-term.

As has been said, you don't need a CMS to do what you want. In fact, that is a completely separate topic and is more work than just switching to a different template/layout.

I would suggest you go here - [purecss.io...] - see if any of those layouts would work, because I used one of them as a starting point to save me from starting from scratch. Those examples provided by Yahoo are clean, lean code. Build off them to redesign your site, that's my recommendation.

Going forward, if possible you should use include statements to setup the template (head, header, footer) sections of the site for easier maintenance long-term. Oh, and remember to keep your URLs the same when you roll out the new site.

[Swanny007]

p.s. If you're using Google Webmaster Tools or Analytics, use it as your guide to find out which pages are the top mobile traffic pages. Start by converting the pages that get the most mobile traffic from Google to responsive first. Do the top 10-20 pages and work your way down the list, since you have to manually edit every page anyway.

[TheSuperStar]

Hi Swanny. My old IDE doesnt support CSS (or anything really beyond dragging pics and text onto a page and making links to other pages (oh it allows for bold and italic) - it doesnt even have header/footer sections etc).

Moving forward - would you say a new IDE would be useful here - to emulate the site structure and also take ideas from those purecss examples?

[Swanny007]

What is IDE?

[nomis5]

100% with Swanny007.

Spend a couple of days trying to convert 1 page to responsive design and then see where you stand. Don't just believe it can't be done before giving it a very definite try.

Creating a separate m. Site may seem the easier option at first but it really is a total nightmare to maintain.

Don't be freaked out by G's date of 21 april. Take your time and create a long lasting solution.

[MrSavage]

I'm going to bet any money that your m.site is going to look and be far more user friendly than caving into responsive site peer pressure. Oh sure just move this here and move that there and compromise this design, etc, etc. Oh sure. What percent of your users on are smartphones? It's a philosophical debate. Go ahead, ruin your site for the sake of whatever. Honestly I would be doing the m.site version up until the point that responsive doesn't turn your site into some monstrosity. For the users or for the search engines. That's what the decision should be about. There is more than one opinion out there. I guess having a 24-inch or 18-inch monitor is going to become as usable as a 5-inch smartphone is the responsive pushers have their way.

[Swanny007]

What's with the hate for responsive design? Maybe you don't know how to do it right?

My site is informational and all the information is shown no matter what your screen size. The ads are responsive, the only thing that noticeably changes is my nav bar switches from a horizontal list of items to one of those 3-line buttons in the top corner for mobile screens (standard "icon" for menus on mobile BTW). The images including the logo resize to fit the screen, nothing is skewed or too small to see/read. The font size actually gets a little larger on the smallest screen size for easier readability. I could go on...

My design literally looks good on mobile and larger screens. I set a max-width on the content div so it doesn't stretch the content across the entire screen on really wide screens.

MrSavage, maybe you can post an example of a bad responsive site or two so I can understand why you're saying that. I visit very nice and functional responsive sites daily.

[MrSavage]

I see it every day I visit various websites across the internet. It's a peer pressure move. It's not about making the website better for the user, but it's geared at making it friendly for search engines. I don't want to get snotty about the subject, however when a website decides to make itself functional for every possible scenario, it can't possibly be the best it can be. All it can be is vanilla. I've seen lately some off the most ugly and dysfunctional looking website changeovers. There is lots of encouragement from the sidelines as to what's superior. I could debate forums also, but look no further than an example like red flag deals. What do I prefer? I prefer a site that's specialized for what device I'm using. If not, what you get is a dumbed down experience. No thanks. If the area of design and functionality improve, my opinions will change regarding responsive. In this thread, member A asks about m.site but instead gets a barrage of responsive design peer pressure.

[aakk9999]

sounds like quite a lot of manual work for me to do - just for that alone!

Then perhaps an alternative could be to look into Dynamic Serving, starting with most popular mobile pages?

Mobile Configuration: Dynamic Serving [developers.google.com]

[RedBar]

Like Swanny007, my responsive sites look fine on all devices however I have to admit I have experienced some awful ones. I must mention one mobile site I visited for the very first time last night and I was pleasantly surprised, ebay.co.uk. I assume the .com is the same, it was quick, it worked as intended, I'm guessing that was no small feat?

To the OP, there are some very nice templates available at very reasonable cost, obviously there are free ones but, in general, you do need to know a bit about coding etc.

[TheSuperStar]

God im well messed up now! lol

[TheSuperStar]

Swanny - IDE - "Integrated Development Environment".

For the purpose of this thread - something like a WYSIWYG editor - whatever it may be.

What do others here use these days? I would be interested as I need to upgrade.

[TheSuperStar]

Is this sort of thing any good?

It seems like a quick and easy way to get my site friendly - and then I can address more complex re-designs over time.

With me being short on time - I need the fastest possible solution.
< snip >

Is this the same as "dynamic serving" aakk9999

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 2:34 pm (utc) on Apr 4, 2015]
[edit reason] removed link to mobile site creation service, not allowed per forum Charter [/edit]

[netmeg]

If you go into this looking for a quick and dirty solution, you'll end up with a quick and dirty website.

This all requires a lot more thought, and if you're late to the party, you're late to the party. Slapping a bandaid on your existing site won't make it better.

FIRST OF ALL. How much of your traffic is mobile right now?

[MrSavage]

Can we possibly give away the "mobile site creation service" without being too obvious, but helpful at the same time? I'm all ears when it comes to quick or easy solutions. Perhaps that's a different discussion, but sometimes a link is helpful?

[netmeg]

I don't think so. We don't want any promotion or inference of endorsement. We all know how to Google for such services and do our own research.

[TheSuperStar]

I don't have time to worry about inference of endorsement or promotion - I came here for help.

I certainly don't have time for this level of moderation on a forum where you can't point another site out in order to add clarity to my posts.

Cya.

[netmeg]

K. Good luck.

[incrediBILL]

I certainly don't have time for this level of moderation on a forum where you can't point another site out in order to add clarity to my posts.

You don't know who the heck is reading your posts and it's in your own best interest not to give away too much information.

There's no need to point out a site link to add clarity.

We've been doing it for many hundreds of thousands of posts without adding a single link to the owners site.

The problem with links is as follows:
- Others might follow your link and steal your idea
- People that compete with you might do bad things, negative SEO things
- Other people have been known to click bomb advertisers on sites, etc.
- Your link might be legit, the next 100 are spammers, then the forum goes to hell

That's why we don't do it.


You'll find out the hard way, as many that came before you did which is why we have these rules.

Good luck as you're going to need it if you tell everyone everywhere what you're doing in a highly competitive web space.

Just thought it needed to be said because people not familiar with our wise ways don't get it because it hasn't happened to them, yet.

- Bill

P.S. If you really want to give those links for 'clarity' we have a supporters forum where there aren't so many prying eyes and it's allowed, even a SITE REVIEW forum. If that's what you need, it's there, but we don't recommend doing it in public. The popular demand for it is why we made the private forums.

[netmeg]

He wasn't talking about his own site so much as a service that renders ones site mobile friendly.