Responsive or separate mobile for multiregional sites

[Ahsan Mushtaq]

<moved from another location>

Gray illyas Said:

Responsive design does not have a ranking benefit

I have a multi regional responsive website with more than 300 ranked keywords in google with following url structure

e.g
example.com
fr.example.com
it.example.com
pt.example.com and so on

How can I structure above urls for mobile without disturbing my ranking?

[edited by: aakk9999 at 1:02 pm (utc) on Mar 12, 2015]

[aakk9999]

Hi Ahsan,

I am little bit confused. Reading the above post and also a bit longer post you posted in [webmasterworld.com...] thread, it appears to me that:

- you have a responsive website that ranks well
- you are concerned that, after April 21st you will lose ranking on google mobile SERPs
- you are thinking to change your current site(?) and introduce a mobile version(?) in order to rank better on Google mobile serps?
- and the reason for this is because Gary Illyes said that responsive design does not have ranking benefit, and you think that if you have m. site, you would get ranking benefit?

Is this what you are asking?

[Ahsan Mushtaq]

you have a responsive website that ranks well

i have a responsive website that ranks well

- you are concerned that, after April 21st you will lose ranking on google mobile SERPs

not exactly now but as Gary Illyes said: Google already has plans for completely separate mobile index in the future

you are thinking to change your current site(?) and introduce a mobile version(?) in order to rank better on Google mobile serps?

i'm not thinking for changing current site but introduce a mobile version in order to rank better on google mobile SERPs

and the reason for this is because Gary Illyes said that responsive design does not have ranking benefit, and you think that if you have m. site, you would get ranking benefit?

yes exactly and i thing with m. i would get ranking benefit as well as offer different deals to mobile visitors (display different banners from desktop etc)

[aristotle]

As I understand it, if a site already has a responsive design that passes Google's Mobile-Friendly test, then you don't need a separate mobile version.

In fact, Google apparently prefers a single responsive site rather than two separate versions.

Another advantage of a single site is that it is simpler and easier to maintain.

But before making any final decisions, you need to check the results of Google's Mobile-friendly tester, because it has its own peculiar requirements for passing the test.

[EditorialGuy]

In fact, Google apparently prefers a single responsive site rather than two separate versions.

The word "suggests" might be better than "prefers," because "prefers" could lead some people to believe that there's a ranking benefit for sites that use responsive layouts instead of other mobile-friendly approaches. Google's thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of responsive, dynamic, and separate non-mobile and mobile pages are in a white paper at:

[google.com...]

i'm not thinking for changing current site but introduce a mobile version in order to rank better on google mobile SERPs.

No need. You're all set, assuming that your responsive layout passes Google's "mobile-friendly" test.

[aakk9999]

Interesting.

I agree with the others that since you already have a responsive site, there is nothing else you should need to do.

But if you want to test this presumption, you can always test it for one of y our regions by doing the following:

- Choose one page that rank well in one of your regions (let's for example, take Portugal)
- create mobile page variant of this page only using the domain m.pt.example.com. Therefore you would have a responsive page pt.example.com/your-one-page and m.pt.example.com/your-one-page
- for this page only, follow the mobile site instructions closely in relation on how to set rel alternate (on the pt.example.com/your-one-page to point to m.pt.example.com/your-one-page) and rel canonical (on this new mobile subdomain page m.pt.example.com/your-one-page to point to responsive page pt.example.com/your-one-page)
- make sure that the rest of your m.pt.example.com/any-other-page redirect to pt.example.com/any-other-page OR returns 404
- make sure that all other internal links from your m.pt.example.com point directly to your responsive site pt.example.com (and do not go via redirect).

Once you have tested this thorougly, let Google index this page and see what page Google chooses to display in SERPs and on which position(s).

If you do this, I would be interested to know the results.