Best SEO practices for mobile URLs: 301, rel=canonical, or something else?
- by Chris
I am developing a site with a mobile version and am trying to figure the appropriate way to manage the URLs for search engines. So far I've considered:
Having a separate mobile site (m.example.com) with
rel="canonical" links to the regular
site.
Putting both the mobile
site and full site on one URL (example.com), and
doing user agent sniffing.
Another
opinion:
Spencer: "If you have a mobile site at
a separate location or URL, you should
301 redirect each and every mobile
page to its corresponding page on your
main website. Employ user agent
detection so that the mobile optimized
version is served up if someone's
coming in from a hand-held.
- http://developer.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1722-Mobile-site-Development-Best-Practices-for-SEO-Usability
Both 2 and 3 make it hard for a user who wants to switch to the full site or mobile site manually, but I'm not sure 1 is the best alternative.
What's the best way to write URLs for a mobile site?