Attempting to determine the proper tactics for mobile SEO has been a mystery in the past. Google has given few clues about how to approach mobile design as part of professional website development. But things have changed in recent years as Google has started to give some major hints on the types of elements that they consider important for mobile sites. There are three ways to handle mobile content and Google has recommendations for each method:

 

Use a New URL

In many cases, web designers decide to direct mobile users to a completely different URL to access content. When this happens, Google would like to see the link canonical tag on mobile pages to direct to the desktop version of the site and the link alternate tag on desktop pages to direct to the mobile version of the site.

Google also wants separate user agent redirection lists to be set up for different types of mobile users. For example, a user of a Samsung Android phone will be directed by the server differently than the user of an iPhone. This integrates responsive design into the equation, changing the layout to fit the specific screen width of the device.

 

Same URL With Different HTML

Another way to approach mobile design is to use the same URL for desktop and mobile versions of the site but have the two sites have different HTML. When doing this, Google recommends adding a Vary HTTP header to the server response. This will allow Google to read and crawl both the mobile and desktop versions of the URL.

 

Same URL and HTML

This is the preferred method of handling mobile and desktop sites by Google. In this case, you would use CSS3 media queries to create different looks for the site. Google prefers this method for several reasons. Two of the most common reasons for implementing this approach is because it brings all ranking metrics to one URL and it is very easy to implement.

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