Desktop & Mobile website vs Single Responsive website
 

I'm currently working on some new websites and updating my technical skill set at the same time.

Trying to decide the way to go in terms of optimizing for mobile. The trend seems to be to have one URL that is responsive to all device types, however, upon doing some SEO research I'm not sure if it is beneficial to have a responsive site vs a seperate mobile site in terms of ranking benefits.

In fact, in many of the tests the mobile only sites appear to rank better than the responsive sites.

Trying to decide which route to go. Separate desktop & mobile sites, or a single responsive URL.

Each have their own pros and cons, but my #1 concern is effect on SERP rankings.

Google states the single responsive URL as an industry "best practice", but again real world results show otherwise.

Discuss :)

Good topic.

I vote for separated versions. Just look at big market players - they have desktop and mobile versions on different sub/domains

Responsive wins in that case, because search engines will see the same content desktop users do. While the mobile users, would see a compact version, with non essential parts of the website hidden with CSS, either until triggered by user's action or completely.

I would go with responsive as well,most sites have mobile version beacuse they were made when responsive template was not invented/embraced yet.

A separate site for mobile and desktop is now outdated by almost 4 years.

yup, agree with the above sentiments.
There's also some debate as to whether redirecting your mobile traffic to a mobile site negatively affects your serps

Responsive is the new Web & Mobile site.

i haven't even thought about serps but new sites i make are responsive. It makes it much more good looking on any screen size i think, and people don't have the inconvenience of missing links or content, which is often the case for mobile sites. Yes, tweaking the site for any possible size might be a bitch at times in the creation phase, but once it's done i think it's great.

One would think that the mobile versions doing better than responsive sites are mostly due to the fact those mobile sites have been around longer than most responsive sites and may have had campaigns specific to boost the mobile rankings.

That's just my opinion though.

We switched our flagship sites to responsive and seems to be working out well.

What are those "real world results"? Sample size big enough or just few instances that may not mean much? And if those results compare different sites than many other factors are in play..

Separate would be better depending on the reason behind doing so for example, separate sites gives you extra methods of getting organic traffic.

You aren't just getting one site in the search engines, you're getting two.

If not done correctly page rank could be split between the mobile URL and the desktop URL and could potentially cost you ranking power.

Still seems most of the big ecom brands are still differentiating their mobile/desktop URLs.

i also think responsive is the way to go.

I've been experimenting with both. I've spent the entire day working on a responsive template. After all this, I'm actually now leaning towards the separate mobile/desktop versions.

Responsive has many benefits, but there is still a lot less control regarding how content ends up being displayed and ultimate end-user experience which may or may not matter depending on your specific goals.

Content control is the biggest reason some websites have two different themes. If you're running a tube theme that has all sponsor load FLV movies then responsive is not going to help. It all depends on your site and what you have to deliver.

Responsive.

Is loves responsive. And what u mean by separating the sites (mobile vs. desktop)...redirecting desktop to mobile? This will kill your ranking...

I vote for responsive, makes it easier to hook into template because you only need to do one template instead of two.

i am teaching myself bootstrap and making my we site responisve

PM'd you

I'm not so sure about that as a matter of fact.

Everyone is so hyped up about responsive designs... but from what I've seen it really takes away from how good a site can look.

i.e. I've got a huge monitor at work and really don't want the thumbnails streching into 10 columns, I need those margins, with a responsive design there's not much choice. Making the browser window smaller is not doing it for me. I want a link that says "Mobile version" and "Desktop version", and yeah, you can assume I'm old-school.

Btw, we do have responsive skins, despite my lack of sympathy for them.

you can make responsive with static max width.

I know that, and yes, but most sites don't.

Foundation 5 is your friend


Seriously, there's zero reason to keep separate versions in this day and age. Go responsive or go home.

It very much depends on type of website and expected user experience with it. Some sites can be treated with a responsive design easily while others, for better user experience, should be separated (especially in cases where the regular website has an unusual layout or carries so much information that it would be hard to go through it on a mobile phone). The decision should always be based on the site's exact specs.

If you are building from scratch, then responsive is the way to go.

responsive means no double content and no risking getting penalties for that. You also have the upside of only having to work on one template in case you change something one place will do...

On the (tiny) downside: it does usually mean some overhead. And some people are on slow mobile connections (just traveled the US again, made me realize how lucky we are in the Netherlands, tiny country, lots of people, insane download speeds)

Try to resize as very big and very small window the following popular sites:

http://www.blender.org/
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/
http://www.bostonglobe.com
http://ca.gov
http://wordpress.com
http://gawker.com
http://www.examiner.com
http://www.whitepages.com
http://www.wunderground.com
http://techcrunch.com
http://www.taboola.com
http://www.hubspot.com
http://www.google.com/doubleclick
http://www.domaintools.com
http://adultfriendfinder.com
http://www.engadget.com
http://www.zazzle.com
http://www.sbnation.com
http://www.starbucks.com

To me, it works ok. I vote for one responsible version. Mobile version's it is so 90's wap.

We made tubecamgirl.com autoresizing from launch in early 2011 before this way to design it was called "responsive", in fact it is not perfectly responsive (for today's standards), but the idea it was the same: one version, resizes ok in whatever display or phones.

Yeah, learn ButtStrap - way to go with responsive.