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Multilingual web site with separated desktop and mobile versions

by fsasvari
6 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have multilingual website with separate desktop and mobile versions placed on different urls.

So, url structure is something like this:

How to connect those urls ?

On mobile version I have placed meta canonical tag which links to desktop version of same language:

HTML Code:
<link rel='canonical' href='http://www.website.com/some-link/'>
On desktop version I have meta alternate for different languages and one mobile version (same language):

HTML Code:
<link rel='canonical' href='http://www.website.com/some-link/'>
<link rel='alternate' href='http://www.website.com/mobile/some-link/'>
<link rel='alternate' hreflang='de' href='http://www.website.de/some-link/'>
Question is, do I need to link all versions on both desktop and mobile versions like this:

mobile (english)

HTML Code:
<link rel='canonical' href='http://www.website.com/some-link/'>
<link rel='alternate' hreflang='de' href='http://www.website.de/some-link'>
<link rel='alternate' hreflang='de' href='http://www.website.de/mobile/some-link'>
desktop (english)

HTML Code:
<link rel='canonical' href='http://www.website.com/some-link/'>
<link rel='alternate' href='http://www.website.com/mobile/some-link/'>
<link rel='alternate' hreflang='de' href='http://www.website.de/some-link'>
<link rel='alternate' hreflang='de' href='http://www.website.de/mobile/some-link'>
or the first version is enough ?
#desktop #mobile #multilingual #separated #site #versions #web
  • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
    Do you have a good reason to build different versions of the site? There are some good reasons, but I'm not sure if they apply... If it's just an average site I think responsive design would be the right way to go. The mobile would be dealing with only CSS, and would not need to mind any of this stuff.
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    Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
    Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

    What's your excuse?
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    • Profile picture of the author fsasvari
      Originally Posted by nettiapina View Post

      Do you have a good reason to build different versions of the site? There are some good reasons, but I'm not sure if they apply... If it's just an average site I think responsive design would be the right way to go. The mobile would be dealing with only CSS, and would not need to mind any of this stuff.
      It is impossible to build responsive web design on current version of web site. It is very big website with many features and we are building new responsive design, cms and app structure but it will be finished in 6-8 months. So we need some solution to hold until that. Both desktop and mobile versions are finished, we just need to connect them properly for Google and SEO.
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  • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
    I'm not 100% sure of this, but I'm in the impression that if you serve the right kind of site to the mobile users Google should pretty much see that too. They're just looking that the site contents fits the mobile screen.

    You've got some kind of mobile device detection and accompanying redirects, right?

    Google's instructions on mobile, canonical etc. seem to suggest that you're on the right track with your canonical. (See chapter 3, "Separate URLs".)
    Signature
    Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
    Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

    What's your excuse?
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    • Profile picture of the author fsasvari
      Yes, I got mobile detect class which, if return true, redirects user/bot to mobile version of website.. Good to know that I'm on the right track
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  • Profile picture of the author SEOleaders
    Seriously you have considered building different sites for different regions and versions ? I would never ever recommend this to anyone looking for an advice.
    I would recommend you to have only one website with responsive template and provide translations to as many languages as you want by using simple translation plugins.
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    Affordable SEO
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    • Profile picture of the author fsasvari
      Originally Posted by SEOleaders View Post

      Seriously you have considered building different sites for different regions and versions ? I would never ever recommend this to anyone looking for an advice.
      I would recommend you to have only one website with responsive template and provide translations to as many languages as you want by using simple translation plugins.
      It is only one website on multiple domains. All alternate versions links to main .com website, so we have one source code. And yes, we are creating new website with responsive web design but I need some quick solution to patch things until that.
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