Our latest #SFGettingSmarter session is about Mobile SEO Tips and shows the benefits of having both a responsive designed website vs. a Mobile website. This presentation is designed to educate, but we hope that this will also help you decide which avenue is best for your website.

1. MOBILE SEO TIPS
By Yvette

2. WHATS THE GO
• WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
• RESPONSIVE OR MOBILE SITE?
• MOBILE SEO TIPS
• TL;DR
• USEFUL TOOLS
• HELPFUL INFORMATION
2

3. 3IMPORTANCE
4 out of 5 global internet users in
2014 were mobile web users.
Tablet devices are now in half of all
households and 7 in 10
Australians over the age of 16
already own a smartphone.
Mobiles are always on, always
with us and always connected.
Mobile screen time is leading the
way according to new data
released by IAB Australia and
Nielsen which shows that 52
percent of digital screen time is
spent on mobile devices.
There are now 17.5 million
Australians who spent $14.9
billion and more than 285 hours
of their time every year online. 77% of mobile searches are likely
to have a PC available but choose
the convenience of mobile.

4. RESPONSIVE BETTER THAN MOBILE SITES?
RESPONSIVE
• Automatically adjusts current
website on any device
• Requires no redirection for users
which reduces load time.
• Keeps the original domain.
Nothing changes except the code in
the back end
• Keep’s the websites link equity
• More forward thinking – it will
continue to work on the latest
devices next month or next year
with minimal to no programing
• Con – possibly redesigning your
website
MOBILE SITE
• Separate domains
– Customise - navigation buttons Reformat
images and content
– Target keywords differently
• Links equity is diluted due to the
separate domain
• Updating the current mobile site is a
must to keep up with new devices
• It’s only for your mobile
4

5. MOBILE SEO TIPS
SEPARATE URLS?
• On the desktop page, add the link rel=”alternate” tag pointing to the
corresponding mobile URL. This helps Googlebot discover the location of
your site’s mobile pages.
– This tag specifies an alternative URL to the desktop page.
» <link rel="alternate" href="http://m.example.com/" />
• On the mobile page, add a rel=”canonical” tag pointing to the
corresponding desktop URL. This rel=”canonical” tag on the mobile URL
pointing to the desktop page is required as it signals the relationship
between the two URLs
 <link rel=“canonical” href=http://www.example.com/” />
*maintain a 1-to-1 ratio between the mobile page and the corresponding
desktop page
5

6. KEEP RESOURCES CRAWLABLE
• Don’t use robots.txt to block search engines from accessing
critical files on your site that help render the page. If Googlebot
doesn’t have access to a page’s resources, such as CSS, JavaScript, or
images, Google may not detect that it’s built to display and work
well on a mobile browser. In other words, they may not detect that
the page is “mobile-friendly,” and therefore not properly serve it in
mobile search.
6

7. UNPLAYABLE VIDEO CONTENT
“This video is not available on
mobile.”
• License-constrained media,
videos that require flash or
players that are not broadly
supported on mobile devices
should be avoided. Unplayable
content is useless to both your
website and your users.
7
• Use video-embedding
that’s playable on
all mediums.
• HTML5 standards for
animations
• Have a transcript of
the video available
(just in case)

8. SLOW PAGES
Page Loading time will always be important. Users can
lose interest and become frustrated if they have to wait
for your content to load.
8
It takes .6 seconds
for a mobile device to
get a connection for a
page request. This
means that each
redirect adds a
minimum of .6 seconds
to the load time.
Redirect directly to the
correct page.
Remember,
Google is trying to
take the search
straight to your
page. Avoid pop
ups forcing extra
clicks
High-res images are
a massive waste of
bandwidth,
processing time, and
cache space.
Re-size your
images.

9. TL;DR
• Mobile sites important? Yes
• Responsive or Mobile Site? Responsive
• Add rel=“alternate” tag to your desktop website
• Add rel=“canonical” tag to your mobile site
• Don’t block anything important in robots.txt
• Make sure your Videos play and your images load
• Make sure your mobile website loads in under 4secs
• Pages should render legibly at any screen resolution
• Mark up one set of content, making it viewable on any device
• Avoid showing a horizontal scrollbar, whatever the window
size
9

10. INFORMATIVE SITES
• https://developers.google.com/webmasters/
mobile-sites/
• http://www.smartz.com/web-
development/mobile/mobile-vs-responsive-
design/
• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com
.au/2012/04/responsive-design-harnessing-
power-of.html
• http://searchengineland.com/the-definitive-
guide-to-mobile-technical-seo-166066
10

11. HELPFUL MOBILE TOOLS
• http://calendar.perfplanet.com/2012/make
-your-mobile-pages-render-in-under-one-
second/
• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tool
s/mobile-friendly/
• https://developers.google.com/speed/pag
espeed/insights/
11