Last Thursday, Google came out with another announcement about the importance of moving from an m-dot site to a mobile responsive one. M-dot is the old way we used to create mobile sites by using it as a sub-domain. That’s how we used to view websites on phones when it was first possible to do so. It was different coding, so you had to adjust for a bunch of different devices. Now with responsive sites, they just basically resize and adjust to every type of device that views them.
The problem with m-dot was maintaining them as a different site. On top of that, a lot of businesses used a cut-down version of their desktop site for mobile. Someone would search for a business using mobile, and they’d be redirected to the cut-down site. Google sees that as a problem, considering it a faulty redirect. If you’re already running an m-dot site, you’ve probably got some of those Google errors in your website already which is going to cause you to lose a lot of traffic.
By having one site with a responsive design, you won’t have indexing issues and you’ll only have to maintain one site. When we move to mobile first next year, this is going to be a real issue for site owners who aren’t prepared. So if you’ve got an m-dot site, it’s time to start moving it to a responsive site, and finish before the end of the year. We don’t know exactly when mobile first is coming, but it looks like the beginning of next year.
Jim Stewart is a leading expert in search engine optimisation. His business StewArt Media has worked with clients including Mars, M2 and the City of Melbourne.
