Mobile Web Sites - What are they good for?

Hi,
If this thread is in wrong place please move.

I have just been asked by a client to create a mobile web site for them. Like m.website.com.
I have completed alot of seo and ranking for them and they are on page one for relevant terms, the site on page one is www.website.com not m.website.com

The question is, if I produce the m.website.com it won't be ranking anywhere so what value does it have? I mean the same serps appear for mobile search right, so how does anyone find the m.website.com site through search?
It seems a real waste of time, the only value I see is if they are doing adwords and they can by mobile traffic and point that traffic to the mobile site but for organic search what is the point?

I look forward to hearing feedback.

Maybe I'm missing the point here but, why not just make the original site mobile friendly ? A good deal of people surf the web with a smart phone.

Auto-redirect to m.website.com for mobile users. Why do this? Usability. Your smart phone and desktop are worlds apart, so a different layout for each is preferred. You will see a large increase in the productivity of your mobile traffic when they are given a mobile friendly option. Alternately, a mobile formatted website likely isn't going to give the best user experience to someone sitting on a 20"+ flatscreen. The search engines can tell what you're doing and will handle it accordingly. In fact I would have to say this setup is beneficial to you in varied mobile search results.

If you have mobile traffic, or the potential to bring in a good percentage of mobile traffic, having a mobile friendly layout automatically loaded for mobile users is a good idea.

the point of it is so when someone goes to the site through their phone it will auto direct them to m.website.com
they can advertise on their on site with banners, it will get some good traffic but only returning traffic that already goes the site

Thanks. I'm starting to understand Dirtbag. is this right?
1. someone on smart phone searches google
2. when they see the link to my site it auto-redirect to m.website.com

Does Google do the auto-redirect to m.website.com or me?

bhbfun said:

Thanks. I'm starting to understand Dirtbag. is this right?
1. someone on smart phone searches google
2. when they see the link to my site it auto-redirect to m.website.com

Does Google do the auto-redirect to m.website.com or me?

Click to expand...

You do it. You can get a easy code for do that.

Hey master of money, so the code detects that the device is a smartphone and not a PC and serves up the mobile version?

is that correct?

bhbfun said:

Hey master of money, so the code detects that the device is a smartphone and not a PC and serves up the mobile version?

is that correct?

Click to expand...

Yes, if you use wordpress it's as easy as creating a second mobile friendly theme and setting up one of many plugins. I've been using wp-tap mobile detector on my wordpress blogs..

Thanks dirt bag, I'll check it out. I think I understand now, great!