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Design and UsabilityGeneral

Should You Offer a Mobile Version of your Website?

written by Michael Gray Oct 1, 2009

As iPhone’s, Blackberries, Palm Pre’s and other smart phones become more widespread should site owners and publishers start to offer mobile versions, and from an SEO perspective what should you be concerned about?

Now that smart phones are common, displays are getting larger, and mobile browsers are able to handle more complex displays, are mobile bare bones text version even needed … for many sites the answer remains yes. First let’s look at the two extremes, if you have a rich media site such as Disney.com in most cases mobile browsers aren’t going to have the technical ability to display that complex or that much information. If that’s the case then you absolutely need a mobile version. This is a strategy that Disney has embraced as you can see from the web based and mobile screen shots below.

disney

photo

At the other end of the spectrum are sites which are have no rich media, or complex displays, sites such as craigslist.org which are primarily text based. For sites like this there’s no need to offer a separate mobile version, as the sites render nearly identical on on both platforms

craigslist.org

photo (1)

However as is usually the case most sites, aren’t at either extremes, they lie somewhere in the middle, and the answer as to whether they should offer a separate mobile version is, it depends. Many business owners will make this decision based on whether they do business on;line or offline. However if you are a doctor, dentist, or hairdresser your customers may still look for you on their mobile phone, to get an address or phone number in case they need directions, to cancel, an appointment, let you know they are running late, or schedule a new appointment.

Once you’ve established if you need a mobile website the challenge becomes how you do it, many websites offer a mobile version under a subdomain such as m.example.com, however a more sophisticated implementation uses user agents, and serves out the content conditionally. This approach is not without risks, if you serve content conditionally based on user agent you don’t want to cross the line into black hat territory and cloaking. You want to offer the same content to users as you do to search engine spiders. This is a topic Matt Cutts recently discussed in a Webmaster Central Video:

The one bit of good news is more and more CMS website systems are starting to offer mobile modules and plugins, for example wordpress users can take advantage of this plugin, Joomla offers several choices, as does Drupal .

Should You Offer a Mobile Version of your Website? was last modified: August 15th, 2011 by Michael Gray
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Michael Gray

Michael Gray has been involved in developing and marketing websites since 1998. He currently is the president of his own consulting firm, where he publishes his own sites and work with clients on improving their search engine optimization and social media strategies. He is a frequent speaker and can be seen regularly at Pubcon, Search Marketing Expo, Search Engine Strategies, and Affiliate Summit conferences throughout the year. Below is a collection of articles he has written. You can connect with Michael on his Twitter, Facebook or Google+ profile.

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Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

6 comments

Tag44 Oct 5, 2009 at 11:14 am

Thanks Michael for the wonderful post and yes i would definitely launch my site mobile version in this 3G world.

Reply
Tag44 Oct 4, 2009 at 11:14 pm

Thanks Michael for the wonderful post and yes i would definitely launch my site mobile version in this 3G world.

Reply
Blackhat SEO Nov 13, 2009 at 12:04 am

I think every marketer should take advantage of mobile media. Its the future.

Reply
Blackhat SEO Nov 12, 2009 at 12:04 pm

I think every marketer should take advantage of mobile media. Its the future.

Reply
Nina Anthony Apr 14, 2010 at 7:38 pm

Nice article. WordPress also makes adding a mobile version of your site easy with plugins such as WP Touch

Reply
Mobile Websites Mar 16, 2011 at 4:13 pm

I think that every site should be optimized for mobile visitors. Mobile users show more intent to buy, call or visit your business when on their mobile devices so you should have your contact information, phone number and address served up to these visitors first as mobile devices are just like the yellow pages in today’s world.

Gus
MobileWebsites.com

Reply

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