Recently there’s been some big new for Pittsburgh web design companies. Google has historically been a reactive presence in the world of SEO, watching trends in development, adjusting its algorithm, and leaving SEO practitioners to deduce what exactly the major search engine is looking for in a website. Now, at least for mobile websites, Google has taken a definitive stance and
publicly shared its recommendations
for mobile site development.
Three Main Systems for Mobile Website Development
Most mobile sites can be grouped into one of three categories in terms of their development:
1) Responsive Development – This form of development entails that the site serves all devices using the same set of URLs, and the only difference between desktop and mobile websites is how CSS renders the actual page on the device used to access it. The page itself uses the same URL serving the same HTML regardless of how it is accessed.
2) Dynamic Development – This type entails that the site serves all devices using the same set of URLs, but each URL serves separate HTML and CSS depending on the device used to access the website.
3) Distinct Development – This last type entails that a website has entirely different desktop and mobile sites.
Google’s Preferred Method
The type of development that Google favors is responsive website development. The primary factor involved in this is that because all content of a page remains the same as well as the URLs and HTML/CSS, spiders have a much easier time of crawling and indexing pages. Essentially, it’s the most transparent system for Google to read.
If you do go the route of having a device-specific approach, Google offers up a few other suggestions. Namely, it says that for this approach, developers should use a different type of annotation to let the search engine know that its content changes based on the user’s device.