Some of us have separate pages for mobile and desktop users. Should we try to get incoming links to the mobile pages? If so, should they differ in any way to those we get for our desktop-optimised pages?
KiffTay
4:23 pm on Mar 3, 2017 (gmt 0)
Every single mobile page should have a canonical link to your desktop site so search engines can decide for themselves the best version to serve to the user. This is a good question though that's had me and my colleague puzzling for a few minutes! We came up with the following:
Don't purposely build links to your mobile site. It's the same domain anyway so any links to your desktop site will still help your mobile site rank, and if a desktop user clicks on an m.domain link, that's a bad UX.
Hope that helps!
robzilla
5:55 pm on Mar 3, 2017 (gmt 0)
You may still take the responsive route at some point and then you'll likely regret building links to the mobile subdomain. At the same time, if you only build links to your desktop site, all referred mobile users will enter via the desktop site, i.e. the opposite of the UX problem KiffTay describes. You can't win, basically. (Except, perhaps, with a responsive layout.)
lucy24
8:15 pm on Mar 3, 2017 (gmt 0)
if you only build links to your desktop site, all referred mobile users will enter via the desktop site
But this can be handled with an intelligent redirect--one that sends users to the mobile version of the same page, not the front page. At least for the most readily recognizable UAs, like Android or iP (case sensitive). Sometimes looking at the referer can give a supplementary clue.
