Mobile usability errors

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Jon Dunn: Hello crew,
  
  I've just been contacted by a business who are doing some last minute fretting about next Friday's Mobile Update.
  
  They have a WMT warning that 87% of the pages have critical mobile usability errors.
  
  Some info is as follows:
  
  - The site has tens of thousands of desktop pages.
  
  - Mobile users get directed to m.domain.com but this is one page capture page. There are no mobile version URL's of the main site.
  
  - Google has indexed the m.domain.com page but does not show it when you are on mobile (if you search for company name).
  
  - The site is missing rel="alternate" media="screen" tags, but correctly redirects mobile devices.
  
  Question: If we add the rel="alternate" media="screen" on all pages to the one page m.domain.com will this clear the issues (as we are providing a mobile friendly page)?
  
  Thanks in advance...
• 
  Jim Munro: I would approach that by first handing out a smartphone to anyone who does not have one,  ;then ask the meeting to access their site before requesting budget to build a proper mobile site.
  
  Unless you have a css genius like +Andy Wigglesworth ;or it is a wordpress site, I think a proper mobile site would be cheaper and faster than responsive design.
• 
  Jon Dunn: Yes +Jim Munro that is my advice, but in the interim and to ensure the site doesn't drop mobile rankings next Friday, would the solution above go some way to reduce the wmt errors if we can get the rel alternate tag indexed on these pages?
  
  Thanks
• 
  Jim Munro: I am not an expert, Jon, but it seems to me that you should be able to tell your client that because their mobile offering has been so bad it's likely that their mobile traffic from search is currently negligible.
  
  If that's the case, you can reassure them that there's no need to panic now because desktop traffic will not be impacted but there is an opportunity to look  ;at mobile and do a proper job.
• 
  Mickey Wesler: Actually Jim:
  That is almost exactly what I told a client yesterday but I did tell them that they should budget for a new responsive site soon. ; He has very little mobile traffic. ; thanks
• 
  Jon Dunn: 30k mobile visits last 30 days, I don't want to risk not trying to do something here. Anyone else got any feedback on my quick fix while the clients site becomes responsive?
• 
  Jim Munro: oops. Wow, Jon, but how many of those visits exceeded ten seconds?
• 
  Jon Dunn: S'all good +Jim Munro​ . Web developer is now working on making the pages responsive. Thanks for your comments
• 
  Andy Wigglesworth: Sorry, not been online for the past 5 hours!  ;between parents evening and other commitments..
  
  If the web guy is good, he should be able to convert the current site pretty quick as most sites are usually templates (in most cases)!... :)