These days, it can be a challenge for even the most experienced web marketer to keep up with all the industry trends. Therefore, it’s advisable to seek out third-party sources to inform you about the changes taking place.
Without a doubt, a good option is to constantly research the changes Google makes to its SEO policies . Considering that Google is the most popular search engine in the world, it’s important to stay up to date with what they’re doing and, to the extent possible, implement it.
So, now we’ll talk about one of the newest concepts implemented by the G search engine: AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages . These are pages with HTML code designed with a minimized scale to be applied to mobile devices .
What’s the goal? So that users can access websites from their smartphones using the same settings as on a computer. This impacts performance and speed , undoubtedly two very important factors in terms of a website’s retention and conversion capacity .
How does AMP work?
AMP is a Google-backed project that aims to speed up content delivery by using simplified code known as AMP HTML.
In a nutshell, it’s a way to create web pages for static content that load and preview in Google search much faster. To use it, you need to go to the AMP page and start using the framework !
Advantages of using AMP
There’s no doubt that AMP will bring many benefits to you as a web developer or business owner. That’s why we’ve listed the three most important advantages of AMP below:
- Faster loading times: Reduce waiting times for web resources to load. The faster your pages load, the more likely your visitors will stay on them.
- Lower data usage: Along with faster load times, AMP pages require much less mobile data access from smartphones . This is a plus for users who don’t want to rack up additional charges on their monthly data bills. They’ll prefer to visit websites with lower data usage requirements!
- Improved visibility in search results: Pages are displayed in the “Top Stories” box at the top of search results pages for certain queries. This will make your presence in the SERPs much more attractive and, therefore, more likely to garner clicks.
Disadvantages of using AMP
Although AMPs have many advantages, we recommend mentioning some of the disadvantages of implementing them so you can consider them within your project:
- Getting metrics is more cumbersome: Because Google serves a cached version of AMP pages to users, rather than accessing their servers, Google Analytics won’t track user visits unless you do some configuration and apply separate tracking code to your pages.
- Duplication of work: Depending on your approach, developing AMP pages can create additional work because you may need to create the same page for both desktop and AMP.
- Incompatibilities: Given the focus on maintaining high loading speeds, HTML is simplified. This means that certain designs created with standard HTML are not possible, and there may be differences between the desktop and mobile versions of a page.
How to implement AMP on a website?
Google will use AMP to deliver effective content on mobile devices without requiring users to click through to a website to view that content.
Therefore, when implementing AMP, pages with a valid version will be displayed within mobile results via a carousel above the rest of the results for a particular topic. You should also keep the following tips in mind :
- Use an optimized version of CSS
- You are only allowed to use the JavaScript library provided by AMP
- Forms are not allowed on plugin pages
- To avoid extravagant images you have to indicate the height and width
- You can only use AMP-approved extensions if you want to have videos on your page.
Ultimately, optimization is crucial to surviving and staying ahead of the competition. By achieving near-instant loading times, accelerated mobile pages can be the single factor that sets your company apart.
What do you achieve by implementing an AMP?
Essentially, accelerated mobile pages are lightweight and designed to provide a more satisfying UX . In addition, you’ll achieve the following goals:
- Pages built on the AMP platform will load faster, so Google crawlers will give you better PageRank .
- Mobile rankings will increase due to faster loading speeds. This will become an increasingly important factor when Google releases its first mobile index in the near future.
- Less stress on your servers because Google serves these pages from its cache.
- An opportunity to appear in the Google AMP carousel as long as your page has an SEO strategy in place.
- Google appears to be favoring AMP content for its featured snippets when searching on mobile devices.
- According to recent Google studies that determine the impact of AMP on product or service pages from a web marketing perspective, it is ultimately considered a crucial factor in achieving higher conversion rates and reducing bounce rates.
How to identify an AMP?
If you want to know when a page is using the AMP approach, just browse on your mobile device and, when using the Google search engine, you’ll see some options with a lightning bolt icon . That’s the most noticeable identifier!
Today, many brands have embraced AMP to better reach their audiences and offer a better user experience. Good examples include BBC News and The New York Times , and even social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Remember that the AMP framework works seamlessly with all existing browsers, even though it was developed by Google. Its goal is to seamlessly integrate with the most widely used content management systems (CMS) like WordPress and Drupal.
For all the reasons mentioned above, it becomes a viable alternative for companies looking to adapt their websites to these mobile-optimized times. So don’t hesitate to start using AMP!