Is your website compatible on smartphones, tablets and other websites? If not, it should be. Studies show that more people use mobile devices to access the Internet than traditional desktop computers. Therefore, failure to provide a mobile-friendly experience to your site’s visitors will result in a significant loss of traffic.
Separate Mobile Site
One possible configuration for creating a mobile-friendly website is to use a separate URL. In other words, you’ll have to create and maintain two different websites: one for desktop visitors and another for mobile visitors. The mobile version of your site can be attached to the same domain under a different subdomain (e.g. mobi.yoursite.com), or it can use an entirely different domain (e.g. yoursite.mobi). Regardless, Google will treat the mobile version as an entirely different domain, indexing and ranking it appropriately in its search results.
If you’re going to take the route of a separate mobile site, be prepared to invest additional time and resources into maintaining your sites. Conventional wisdom should lead you to believe that maintaining two websites is more time-consuming than maintaining a single website. Anytime you want to add new content or update existing content, you must do so on both the desktop and mobile version.
Dynamic Serving
A second configuration is dynamic serving of HTML. In this configuration, you use the same website URL but serve different HTML based on the visitor’s web browser. If a visitor accesses your website from a desktop computer, he or she will be served the desktop HTML. On the other hand, if a visitor accesses your website from a smartphone, he or she will be served the mobile HTML.
Dynamic serving is a quick and easy solution to ensure a higher level of visibility with your website. The problem with it, however, is the wide variety of web browsers that are currently out there. If your server identifies a desktop browser as being a mobile browser or vise-versa, it may serve the wrong HTML, preventing the user from accessing all of your site’s features and functions.
Responsive Web Design
A third configuration for creating a mobile-friendly website is the use of a Responsive Web Design. Responsive websites utilize a combination of CSS3 media queries and proportion-based grids (not absolute measurements) to ensure a positive browsing experience on all devices. Regardless of what device the visitor is using to access your website, you can rest assured knowing that he or she will be served the same HTML on the same URL.
Note: Responsive Web Design is the ONLY configuration that’s recommended by Google.
