Make it easy for everyone with a mobile phone to get to the URL of your mobile site (typing as little as possible), by setting up multiple mobile addresses and directing visitors to the best version of your site.
Whatever you do, drop the www (no one should ever have to type those three letters on the modern Web. After that, the most common mobile addresses, the ones that can increase the odds your visitors find you on a mobile device are:
* m.yourdomain.com: Recommended for ease of typing, but requires the ability to create sub-domains on a web server
* yourdomain.com/m: Common alternative because of the easy server setup (just create a directly named “w” and save your mobile version there)
* yourdomain.com/i: If you create a version specifically for the iPhone or ipad
* yourdomain.mobi: Requires registering the .mobi version of your domain name, which many sites don’t seem to bother with
* wap.yourdomain.com: In the early days, and at the lowest-level of access, web sites created using the WML, Wireless Markup Language can often be found at a wap. address variation.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello Janine,
Thanks for the tips. I chose to have the “m” sub-domain, and it is working well so far.
Some of my peers chose “mobile” for their sub-domain, which seems an option likely to create more opportunity for typo’s and extra effort when a user tries to key in the site address.
Thanks for the comment, John. I agree. The simpler the better when it comes to mobile domain names.
Hi Janine-
Very nice article. I do have a question though regarding this topic.
Do you know if there is any “preferred”, “required”, or “best practice” method of creating a mobile website from a Google authority perspective? Certain circles I’m in have suggested that the standard method of creating mobile websites is by creating a sub-domain and placing an “m” (i.e. m.domainname.com), then purchase the relevant .mobi domain and redirected it to the m.domainname.com.
Personally, I’d much rather go creating a mobile website under a sub-folder of the domain name (i.e. domainname.com/m). It is by far the easiest, and if the domain has SSL certificate at the root, any sub-folders created will also be protected automatically through encryption for such things as payments for purchases made online. Unlike a sub-domain, an SSL Certificate would need to be purchased separately since technically it is considered to be a separate domain.
Again, I’m looking to confirm whether there is any substance to whether Google or any of the other search engines either reward or penalize the method in which mobile websites are created. Thanks for the opportunity to comment here and hope to see a response from you soon.
Kind Regards…