Google Likes Responsive Sites

CurtisSWN · 1st Mar 2013, 06:49 PM

I guess this is so for SEO reasons.

My question is how does this affect us who are building mobile sites? If the site is built on a m. subdomain does this divide up the G juice, and affect rankings?

A mobile site is going to be different from a desktop site because people are much more focused on certain info and actions, such as "order pizza now", etc.

BIG DEALS · 2nd Mar 2013, 09:27 AM

I read this:

Big consumer brands (Macy’s, Target, Walgreens) opt for a separate smartphone website, served on an m. URL. Coca-Cola’s Tom Daly argued against the responsive design during his presentation at the Mobile FirstLook conference:

“If you get into this HTML5, hybrid mindset and start pretending that a screen is a screen is a screen, you starting forgetting about the customer experience,” Mr. Daly said.

Instead, marketers should be focusing on delivering a differentiated experience in mobile that focuses on what on-the-go consumers are looking for.

If you monitor the mobile thought leadership sites like Mobile Commerce Daily, there’s been quite a few discussions around the fact that simply repurposing desktop content for smartphones is no longer an option, and serving custom content for smartphones generates better experience and conversions.

With Google’s latest focus on rewarding the best user experience versus SEO tricks, it would be weird if Google were to punish companies striving to make things easier for their on-the-go visitors.

Simply put: Sometimes responsive sites will work, but separate mobile sites are often needed. I personally prefer a separate site as it is custom tailored to what the user needs.

Thoughts?

mak25 · 2nd Mar 2013, 10:42 AM

Originally Posted by BIG DEALS

I read this:

Big consumer brands (Macy’s, Target, Walgreens) opt for a separate smartphone website, served on an m. URL. Coca-Cola’s Tom Daly argued against the responsive design during his presentation at the Mobile FirstLook conference:

“If you get into this HTML5, hybrid mindset and start pretending that a screen is a screen is a screen, you starting forgetting about the customer experience,” Mr. Daly said.

Instead, marketers should be focusing on delivering a differentiated experience in mobile that focuses on what on-the-go consumers are looking for.

If you monitor the mobile thought leadership sites like Mobile Commerce Daily, there’s been quite a few discussions around the fact that simply repurposing desktop content for smartphones is no longer an option, and serving custom content for smartphones generates better experience and conversions.

With Google’s latest focus on rewarding the best user experience versus SEO tricks, it would be weird if Google were to punish companies striving to make things easier for their on-the-go visitors.

Simply put: Sometimes responsive sites will work, but separate mobile sites are often needed. I personally prefer a separate site as it is custom tailored to what the user needs.

Everything that was said here makes absolute perfect sense.

Thanks for posting that and I hope that point sinks in to those that question that.

A one size fits all just doesn't cut it in certain cases. And that will be true for quite a while I forsee.

CurtisSWN · 3rd Mar 2013, 12:50 PM

I hope Google then starts to take into consideration then that mobile sites necessarily will not emulate the desktop version of a site, and take steps accordingly.

arberb · 3rd Mar 2013, 01:15 PM

I think it all depends on whats your website about and what content do you have on your page. If you have lots of images and a boat load of data on your main site you should create a separate mobile site. Keep in mind mobile device aren't as powerful as computers just yet and most people are on capped data plans (well in Canada & USA)

internetmonkey · 3rd Mar 2013, 08:57 PM

A separate site just for phones on a .m sub domain is the best not only for the reasons listed above but design as well. It is SO much easier to make a nice looking responsive site for desktop and tablets without having to worry about mobiles. I've honestly just given mobile sites to a couple clients for free just to not have to worry about how the responsive site will look on phones.

lint631 · 5th Mar 2013, 04:00 PM

I've rolled out some new responsive sites for clients and found that a lot of the time it's slooooowwww to load on my mobile device. These are prebuilt WP themes so I'm sure you can speed things up but you would have to do some custom work.

Silvio Porcellana · 6th Mar 2013, 02:19 AM

A quite interesting read about this subject is this article on Search Engine Land by Bryson Meunier: When Responsive Web Design Is Bad For SEO

Jay Moreno · 19th Apr 2013, 11:48 PM

Many people dont realize that there is more to mobile than just responsive and stand alone mobile sites. There is also adaptive.

Adaptive takes the best of responsive and the best of standalone sites and fuses them together giving the best mobile optimized end user experience.

An adaptive design renders content specifically for the mobile device viewing the content making sure it provides the best end user experience and also the most compatible.

It can deliver content on the same url just like a responsive site which Google likes for SEO purposes. However standalone and adaptive are tailored more the end user with adaptive serving dynamic content on a device specific basis for superior download speeds and overall better control over the end user experience.

Don't just take my word for it check out the excellent SEOmoz webinar Good Practices to Maximize Your Mobile SEO - Webinar | SEOmoz - its free to register

I think responsive is great for new sites and for desktop and tablet users but responsive simply isn't the silver button that people make it to be. For the best mobile experience adaptive or standalone optimized sites are the way to go - following on from what Big Deals mentioned take a look at the top 200 sites in Alexa and you will find the vast majority do not have a mobile presence that is responsive but instead opt for user experience and go with adaptive or standalone.

Responsive is simple to deploy - for me its more mobile ready than mobile optimized.

Pointless ranking number one in Google if the end user cant find what they are looking for easily due to a bad user experience or having to wait more than Google's recommend 3.5 seconds just to access a single page because the files sizes of a responsive site are bloated and unnecessarily large..

Understanding the pros and cons of all and reviewing the sites needs, niche and functionality will serve you much better in choosing whats the best solution to deploy.

globalpro · 20th Apr 2013, 06:26 AM

Am glad Jay chimed in, saves me from having to get into the adaptive explanation (learned it from him anyway and he does a better job at it).

What a lot of people do miss, is that while Google likes responsive sites, they actually prefer a mobile optimized site even more. To them it is all about end user experience because of the money they make off of mobile ads ($2.4 billion at the end of 2011).

With any desktop, you go through basic process of on-site SEO, which includes site maps listed with Google for indexing purposes, but what most miss is they want to see (and crawl) a mobile website as well. Google Love still works, if done right.

Listen to what Jay is saying, he knows his stuff.

PicnicTutorials · 20th Apr 2013, 06:32 AM

Subdomains are considered different sites. But google can figure out what your trying to do 9 times out of 10. So it would usually show the mobile query first when on mobile. But yes it would be better to have one domain and show the relavant page depending on device.

AnotherWay · 20th Apr 2013, 10:43 AM

I've just been reading an interesting article on this, and so have to second John in completely agreeing with Jay.

A Comparison of Methods for Building Mobile-Optimized Websites

It will be interesting to see what impact this has on smaller businesses who may not be able to invest in what looks to be the way forward.

1st Mar 2013, 06:49 PM	#1
CurtisSWN IM Warrior War Room Member Join Date: 2008 Location: St Paul, MN, USA Posts: 550 Thanks: 36 Thanked 74 Times in 62 Posts	Google Likes Responsive Sites Share on: I guess this is so for SEO reasons. My question is how does this affect us who are building mobile sites? If the site is built on a m. subdomain does this divide up the G juice, and affect rankings? A mobile site is going to be different from a desktop site because people are much more focused on certain info and actions, such as "order pizza now", etc.
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2nd Mar 2013, 09:27 AM	#2
BIG DEALS HyperActive Warrior Join Date: 2012 Posts: 119 Thanks: 14 Thanked 19 Times in 11 Posts	Re: Google Likes Responsive Sites Share on: I read this: Big consumer brands (Macy’s, Target, Walgreens) opt for a separate smartphone website, served on an m. URL. Coca-Cola’s Tom Daly argued against the responsive design during his presentation at the Mobile FirstLook conference: “If you get into this HTML5, hybrid mindset and start pretending that a screen is a screen is a screen, you starting forgetting about the customer experience,” Mr. Daly said. Instead, marketers should be focusing on delivering a differentiated experience in mobile that focuses on what on-the-go consumers are looking for. If you monitor the mobile thought leadership sites like Mobile Commerce Daily, there’s been quite a few discussions around the fact that simply repurposing desktop content for smartphones is no longer an option, and serving custom content for smartphones generates better experience and conversions. With Google’s latest focus on rewarding the best user experience versus SEO tricks, it would be weird if Google were to punish companies striving to make things easier for their on-the-go visitors. Simply put: Sometimes responsive sites will work, but separate mobile sites are often needed. I personally prefer a separate site as it is custom tailored to what the user needs. Thoughts?
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3rd Mar 2013, 12:50 PM	#4
CurtisSWN IM Warrior War Room Member Join Date: 2008 Location: St Paul, MN, USA Posts: 550 Thanks: 36 Thanked 74 Times in 62 Posts	Re: Google Likes Responsive Sites Share on: I hope Google then starts to take into consideration then that mobile sites necessarily will not emulate the desktop version of a site, and take steps accordingly.
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3rd Mar 2013, 01:15 PM	#5
arberb Warrior Member Join Date: 2009 Posts: 17 Thanks: 1 Thanked 4 Times in 4 Posts	Re: Google Likes Responsive Sites Share on: I think it all depends on whats your website about and what content do you have on your page. If you have lots of images and a boat load of data on your main site you should create a separate mobile site. Keep in mind mobile device aren't as powerful as computers just yet and most people are on capped data plans (well in Canada & USA)

3rd Mar 2013, 08:57 PM	#6
internetmonkey Active Warrior Join Date: 2010 Location: USA Posts: 87 Thanks: 26 Thanked 10 Times in 9 Posts	Re: Google Likes Responsive Sites Share on: A separate site just for phones on a .m sub domain is the best not only for the reasons listed above but design as well. It is SO much easier to make a nice looking responsive site for desktop and tablets without having to worry about mobiles. I've honestly just given mobile sites to a couple clients for free just to not have to worry about how the responsive site will look on phones.

5th Mar 2013, 04:00 PM	#7
lint631 MobileWebRockstar War Room Member Join Date: 2011 Location: New York Posts: 253 Thanks: 41 Thanked 52 Times in 37 Posts	Re: Google Likes Responsive Sites Share on: I've rolled out some new responsive sites for clients and found that a lot of the time it's slooooowwww to load on my mobile device. These are prebuilt WP themes so I'm sure you can speed things up but you would have to do some custom work.
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6th Mar 2013, 02:19 AM	#8
Silvio Porcellana mob.is.it CEO Registered Member Join Date: 2013 Posts: 45 Thanks: 13 Thanked 18 Times in 13 Posts Blog Entries: 4	Re: Google Likes Responsive Sites Share on: A quite interesting read about this subject is this article on Search Engine Land by Bryson Meunier: When Responsive Web Design Is Bad For SEO

19th Apr 2013, 11:48 PM	#9
Jay Moreno Mobile+WP = JumpMobi.com War Room Member Join Date: 2009 Location: San Antonio, Tx Posts: 1,270 Thanks: 301 Thanked 449 Times in 309 Posts	Re: Google Likes Responsive Sites Share on: Many people dont realize that there is more to mobile than just responsive and stand alone mobile sites. There is also adaptive. Adaptive takes the best of responsive and the best of standalone sites and fuses them together giving the best mobile optimized end user experience. An adaptive design renders content specifically for the mobile device viewing the content making sure it provides the best end user experience and also the most compatible. It can deliver content on the same url just like a responsive site which Google likes for SEO purposes. However standalone and adaptive are tailored more the end user with adaptive serving dynamic content on a device specific basis for superior download speeds and overall better control over the end user experience. Don't just take my word for it check out the excellent SEOmoz webinar Good Practices to Maximize Your Mobile SEO - Webinar \| SEOmoz - its free to register I think responsive is great for new sites and for desktop and tablet users but responsive simply isn't the silver button that people make it to be. For the best mobile experience adaptive or standalone optimized sites are the way to go - following on from what Big Deals mentioned take a look at the top 200 sites in Alexa and you will find the vast majority do not have a mobile presence that is responsive but instead opt for user experience and go with adaptive or standalone. Responsive is simple to deploy - for me its more mobile ready than mobile optimized. Pointless ranking number one in Google if the end user cant find what they are looking for easily due to a bad user experience or having to wait more than Google's recommend 3.5 seconds just to access a single page because the files sizes of a responsive site are bloated and unnecessarily large.. Understanding the pros and cons of all and reviewing the sites needs, niche and functionality will serve you much better in choosing whats the best solution to deploy.
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20th Apr 2013, 06:26 AM	#10
globalpro John Burnette War Room Member Join Date: 2007 Location: S.E. USA Posts: 1,170 Thanks: 984 Thanked 270 Times in 223 Posts	Re: Google Likes Responsive Sites Share on: Am glad Jay chimed in, saves me from having to get into the adaptive explanation (learned it from him anyway and he does a better job at it). What a lot of people do miss, is that while Google likes responsive sites, they actually prefer a mobile optimized site even more. To them it is all about end user experience because of the money they make off of mobile ads ($2.4 billion at the end of 2011). With any desktop, you go through basic process of on-site SEO, which includes site maps listed with Google for indexing purposes, but what most miss is they want to see (and crawl) a mobile website as well. Google Love still works, if done right. Listen to what Jay is saying, he knows his stuff.

20th Apr 2013, 06:32 AM	#11
PicnicTutorials Active Warrior Registered Member Join Date: 2013 Posts: 39 Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts	Re: Google Likes Responsive Sites Share on: Subdomains are considered different sites. But google can figure out what your trying to do 9 times out of 10. So it would usually show the mobile query first when on mobile. But yes it would be better to have one domain and show the relavant page depending on device.
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20th Apr 2013, 10:43 AM	#12
AnotherWay Warrior Member Registered Member Join Date: 2013 Location: London Posts: 5 Thanks: 3 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts	Re: Google Likes Responsive Sites Share on: I've just been reading an interesting article on this, and so have to second John in completely agreeing with Jay. A Comparison of Methods for Building Mobile-Optimized Websites It will be interesting to see what impact this has on smaller businesses who may not be able to invest in what looks to be the way forward.