1. Mobile SEO
There are three main approaches to develop a site targeting mobile
devices (feature phones, smartphones and tablets):
1. The Responsive Web Design Approach
Responsive Web Design is a Web design approach that uses CSS3 Media
Queries and a fluid grid with relative units in order to display a flexible
design that automatically adapts according to the device used by the
visitor: mobile, smartphone, tablet, desktop, etc. without redirecting or
referring to another page.
The pros and cons of a responsive web design approach from a mobile

2. SEO perspective are:
With a responsive Web design approach you won’t split link popularity
among many URLs targeting the different devices and will avoid any
content duplication issue, maximizing and reusing the same information
by changing its format based on the device.
Nonetheless, this approach would require a possible site redesign and
won’t provide a highly targeted, differentiated user experience and content
offering based on the used device.
2. The Dynamic Serving Approach
With dynamic serving your Web server needs to respond with a different
piece of HTML on the same URL depending on the user agent requesting
the page: Mobile users and bots should see a mobile specific page version
served on the same address than the desktop one, that should be only
accessible to desktop users and search bots.
The pros and cons of a dynamic serving approach from a mobile SEO

3. perspective are:
This approach gives you the alternative of creating a specifically targeted
page for each type of device if you need to (desktop, feature phone,
smartphone or tablet), giving a highly targeted user experience without
splitting link popularity since they’re all going to be shown through the
same URL, based on the identified user agent. Nonetheless, the
maintenance costs and implementation complexities can be high.
3. The Parallel Mobile Site Approach
With a parallel mobile site you will create an additional mobile site URL
structure targeting users accessing via mobile devices, that will be shown
under the “m” subdomain. In this approach visitors and search bots that
end-up in the wrong site version are 301-redirected to the correct one.
For example, if a mobile user or googlebot mobile try to access the
yourname.com/category page, they will be 301-redirected to the mobile
version of that specific page: m.yourname.com/category. The same will
happen the other way around, with desktop visitors and search bots 301-
redirected to their correct desktop page version.
The pros and cons of a parallel mobile site approach from a

4. mobile SEO perspective are:
This approach is similar to the one of the dynamic serving in the sense
that you can create independent and specifically targeted pieces of
content, that can be totally differentiated to give the best user experience,
nonetheless, in this case the pages will be shown through different URLs
which can cause a link popularity split and a content duplication risk if it’s
not correctly optimized (with redirections and the use of tags that will be
covered later).
Improve & Maximize – The Mobile
SEO Recommendations
As a result of the Mobile SEO audit you should create actionable Mobile
SEO recommendations to improve the site mobile search visibility, traffic
and conversions.
Use these templates I’ve shared before to create actionable SEO audit
reports by formatting the recommendations in a easy to understand
document that drives accurate implementation and facilitates the follow-
up.
You can organize the report by including the findings from the mobile SEO
audit along the following recommendations:
Mobile Site Architecture Recommendations
To make sure your mobile site is crawlable and indexable it’s fundamental
you develop recommendations to take into considerations and fix all of the
crawling errors and indexing issues found in the “How is your site
crawled & indexed by mobile search engines?” research and

5. analysis, that also serve as an input to develop and optimize your new
mobile site architecture, paying special attention to:
The mobile site speed.
Make sure your mobile pages load fast, taking into consideration
Google’s Web performance best practices, particularly those
for mobile optimization, that take into consideration mobile devices
limited CPU capabilities and the high round-trip times of mobile networks.
Among others, optimizing caching, defer parsing of Javascript, make
landing pages redirects cacheable, minimizing round-trip times, payload
size and browser rendering, etc. are some of the recommendations to
have a fast site.
All page elements and content are effectively displayed in
mobile devices.
Verify large images, javascript, videos, etc with mobile
emulators such as Google’s Gomometer (or some of the others
used in the previous analysis). Remember that some formats won’t be
shown in most of mobile devices, such as Flash.
Take also into consideration that mobile search results snippets
showing titles, meta descriptions and URLs can be different
and are usually shorter than for desktop. To make sure you make
the most out of them with the mobile targeted keywords and you’re
as concise as possible you can use the Firefox extension User Agent
Switcher to easily visualize Google’s search results as a mobile device and
verify how they’re displayed.
It’s also fundamental to reorganize your mobile page elements in
order to fit well in your most popular mobile devices screens –
the ones you identified in the “What Mobile devices are used by your site
visitors?” analysis–, taking into consideration these Jakob Nielsen’s mobile
usability guidelines.
Maintain a consistent user interface design through the Mobile &
Desktop sites
Although is true that you will need to reorganize your content and
eliminate some elements to fit well in mobile screens is important to keep

6. the same design patterns and references between your Mobile
and Desktop sites, that will help your users to identify and browser
more easily through your mobile site.
Additionally, in dependence of the type of mobile site architecture you’ve
identified as the adequate for your mobile requirements and restrictions in
the previous “Your Mobile Site Architecture” analysis you will need to
take also into consideration some of the following recommendations:
For Responsive Web Design
Allow search engines to crawl pages’ assets (css, js,
images). Make sure you’re not blocking these elements with
your robots.txt.
Use a CMS or Framework to facilitate the
implementation, such as Bootstrap or Foundation and follow
Google’s guidelines to use responsive Web design effectively.
Since you will be using the same page for both desktop and
mobile purposes it’s even more important that you check
those elements that could have problems to be shown
in mobile screens and the site speed.
For Dynamic Serving
Use the vary HTTP header “User Agent” when serving
different content through the same address according to the
user agent to help Googlebot discover your mobile-optimized
content faster.
Since you will be automatically serving your mobile and
desktop content through the same URLs it’s fundamental that
you verify if you’re effectively detecting the user-
agents (and avoid cloaking) by on one hand, always showing
the same information to your mobile visitors and search bots
and, on the other, the same to your desktop visitors and search
bots. Use Google Webmasters Tools Fetch as Googlebot
mobile option and Screaming Frog’s crawling capabilities as
Googlebot mobile, as it was shown in the “How is your site
crawled & indexed by mobile search engines?” analysis.
For Parallel Mobile Sites
Enable a consistent Mobile URL structure under an
“m” subdomain that correspond to the same desktop
version structure. For example, the mobile version of
yourname.com/category will be m.yourname.com/category.

7. Use 301-redirects in all of the site pages to refer
mobile users and bots accessing a desktop page
version to its mobile version and viceversa. For
example, a mobile visitor or search bot accessing to
yourname.com/category should be 301-redirected to
m.yourname.com/category, and viceversa with desktop visitors
and search bots (they will be redirected to the relevant desktop
page when trying to access a mobile page version).
Add a link rel=”alternate” tag in each of the desktop
pages referring to their specific mobile versions and a
link rel=”canonical” tag in all of the mobile pages
referring to their desktop versions, as specified by
Google, for example:
Always include a link from the mobile versions to their
specific desktop versions and viceversa, from each
desktop page to its relevant mobile version. For example, you
should include a link from the desktop
site yourname.com/category to its mobile version
m.yourname.com/category.
Create a Mobile XML Sitemap for feature phone or
smartphone and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools
through the Optimization > Sitemaps functionality.
Configure Google Analytics to show your full
hostname, to make sure you can effectively track your mobile
subdomain.
Mobile Content Recommendations

8. It’s important to create or optimize your mobile site structure with pages
that target through their different elements (title, meta descriptions, URLs,
etc.) and main information (text, images, videos, etc.), by featuring:
Relevant terms with the higher mobile search volume identified in the
mobile keyword research you did in “Your Mobile Sector Audience”
analysis that are also attractive from a business perspective. These
can be a bit trickier to optimize if you’ve chosen a responsive Web
design alternative and your mobile keywords are different from your
desktop ones. If this is the case, then you should identify which of
your desktop pages are the ones that could be also especially
relevant and attractive for your mobile audience.
Address and phone of each office or locality with
geolocalized terms in your mobile optimized pages for local
related businesses.
Structured data according to Google’s specification to
include your business name, products reviews, events, videos, in
order to display rich snippets in the search results. To verify if you’re
correctly implemented structured data on your site you can use the
Structured Data Testing Tool or go to Google Webmaster’s Tool and
select the Optimization > Structured Data report.
Make sure to prioritize those keywords that you have already mobile
visibility, traffic and conversions that you perviously identified in the “What
keywords and pages are used by your mobile users to visit the site?” analysis.
Mobile Popularity Recommendations
If you’ve chosen the responsive Web design or dynamic serving

9. alternatives then you won’t need additional activity from a link popularity
perspective since your mobile URLs are also your Desktop ones, which
are likely already attracting links from ongoing link building campaigns (if
not, make sure to start one now).
Nonetheless, with the parallel mobile site approach you will need
to pay more attention to create links that increase –especially
at the beginning– the specific mobile site structure authority.
To establish a strategy that will help you to increase your mobile site
authority according to your present situation take into consideration what
you’ve found previously in “Your Mobile Search Popularity” analysis,
the volume, type, authority, sources and trends of your incoming links
compared to your competitors.
A couple of good ways to do it, particularly for mobile and local services
and products, are:
Earning citations and references from local media, events or organizations
and your online community.
Creating a Google+ for Business page, that will also help you to
earn more visibility in local related search results.

10. alternatives then you won’t need additional activity from a link popularity
perspective since your mobile URLs are also your Desktop ones, which
are likely already attracting links from ongoing link building campaigns (if
not, make sure to start one now).
Nonetheless, with the parallel mobile site approach you will need
to pay more attention to create links that increase –especially
at the beginning– the specific mobile site structure authority.
To establish a strategy that will help you to increase your mobile site
authority according to your present situation take into consideration what
you’ve found previously in “Your Mobile Search Popularity” analysis,
the volume, type, authority, sources and trends of your incoming links
compared to your competitors.
A couple of good ways to do it, particularly for mobile and local services
and products, are:
Earning citations and references from local media, events or organizations
and your online community.
Creating a Google+ for Business page, that will also help you to
earn more visibility in local related search results.