Nowadays, the users expect the mobile-friendly websites to load considerably fast. However, in actual cases it may take several seconds to load. In fact, around 40% of the people leave a particular site which takes over three seconds to load. Many companies like Canada Search Engine Optimization provides valuable services to the customers to optimize both their website as well as mobile devices to catch up with the latest trends.
Google introduced the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) project to decrease the time taken for a particular piece of content to load on the mobile device of a user. In other words, it is an open source platform launched by Google to improve the mobile web experience as far as the users are concerned.
The Accelerated Mobile Pages are mostly HTML pages which adopt many technical approaches to boost the loading speed of the content and thereby bringing about a good experience for the users.
The Importance of AMP
Today a majority of the searches are carried out on mobile devices than that on the traditional desktops. Further, mobile devices also have a great impact on in-store purchases. These changes in the trends compel the brands to bring about a shift in their mindset. In other words, it is not enough to just have mobile compatibility, but mobile optimization has also become quite essential. Moreover, the site owners are required to have a basic idea about the needs of the mobile customers and depending on that the websites should be customized. Speed is a crucial factor when you consider the mobile experience of a user. AMP possesses the capacity to help the brands to speed up with their concerned websites. In fact, using AMP, the loading speed of a page could be improved by about 15% to 85% because it sheds any unwanted elements on a particular page that serve as an obstacle to the speed of loading. This implies that features including on-page comments and lead generation forms would certainly be disabled. Further, the content of your page will also have to undergo a revamp according to the AMP standards.
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AMP contains HTML, JavaScript, and cache libraries that helps to increase the load speed for the mobile pages owing to the presence of AMP-focused properties and certain extensions, even if they include ‘rich’ content like infographics, audio and video formats, PDFs, etc. In other words, the AMP HTML places some restrictions on the existing tags and styles and the AMP JavaScript loads the external resources asynchronously and limits any kind of external scripts which pose a threat to the rendering of the pages. The AMP CDN refers to a Content Delivery Network which caches your AMP-enabled pages so that the users can instantly access them on their mobile devices. Further, it is essential to utilize the existing schema mark-ups to present a clear picture to the search engines regarding the various aspects of your site.
AMP is an important aspect because it helps the web pages load faster as discussed above, thus improving the usability in a better manner and converting the visitors to stay longer on a particular site. In fact, the faster the load timings, the better the engagement rates, which in turn minimizes the bounce rates and improves the mobile rankings. However, AMP has to be coupled with good quality content to increase the ranking of the site in the Search Engine Results Pages or SERPs.
Impact of AMP on Organic Search
Organic search is another area which is likely to get affected by AMP. Because of the reason that AMP sites would be normally placed at the top of the SERPs during the course of some mobile searches, everything else would be naturally pushed down. Along with this, the paid search options also eat up the space above the fold, which may pose a challenge for organic search. To get the better out of this situation, the brands need to ensure that they grab each and every opportunity for boosting their rankings by focusing on content quality, optimization, and distribution. If you are not willing to use AMP, chances are likely that you will see a sudden decline in the traffic concerned with mobile organic search.
Though the existence of AMP pages do not contribute towards the actual position in the search engine results list, the AMP carousal is displayed first in the result and is regarded as the most prominent one. It is important to remember that only relevant AMP pages which contain well-structured data find them eligible for appearing on the AMP carousal.
Benefits of AMP
The first and foremost benefit of using AMP-backed pages is that it speeds up the loading time of the websites. With the absence of useless elements which tend to slow them down, AMPs act quite faster. This makes the users to thoroughly enjoy the pages which do not keep them waiting, thereby attracting more traffic to your site. Though AMP is not regarded as a ranking factor by itself, it causes a positive impact on mobile ranking owing to its loading speed. In addition, it also improves the performance of the server by reducing the load on the same caused by huge traffic from the mobile devices.
Is AMP that Faster than Mobile?
The AMP version of a page contains less design and thus is able to provide considerable loading speed. This is attributed to the fact that each JavaScript tag takes 100 milliseconds to load each page. So, the lesser the number of tags, the faster the time of loading. Further, AMP discards third-party scripts to develop a stripped down version of the mobile. Because of this reason, Google AMP is regarded as faster than mobile.
How do AMP Affects SEO?
AMP can affect SEO in a positive way. The different ways discussed below will help you to understand this aspect.
➊ Increased View by Carousels
Normally, the site owners invest considerable amount of time and effort to optimize the site for SEO as a part of boosting the rankings in the search engine results list. The higher the position of the site in terms of SERPs, the greater the exposure it will have with regard to the intended audience. The AMP carousal is placed on the extreme top of the SERPs, above the websites which are listed. There are in fact, many benefits for this kind of exposure such as attaining a high click-through rate, increased brand authority, and the like. If the content gets displayed on the carousal, it brings about higher visibility, which in turn increases the chance of a particular reader clicking through your website.
➋ Significantly Increased Mobile Rankings
Owing to the Google’s much laid emphasis on mobile optimization, you would have to deal with two kinds of search engine rankings – the conventional variety and the mobile search engine rankings. For this reason, it is not wise to ignore mobile and also, most of the site visitors gain entry to a particular site using their mobile devices. This implies that mobile ranking is also quite important.
➌ Enhanced Mobile User Experience
Nowadays, over 50% of the searches are carried out through mobile devices where local searches are much focused upon. Further, the people who use mobile do not have much time to spend as in the case of those who use a desktop. This implies that they are less likely to visit a certain site and wait it to load in a few seconds. By implementing AMP and getting the content displayed on the carousal, the users can access it without having to go to the site. Further, if they like what they view in the carousal, it is certain that they visit the actual site to see what it is about. Reducing the loading time is not the only advantage that would improve the mobile experience of the user. A site which is not optimized for mobile devices will take considerable time to load and it would also be displayed incorrectly on the smaller screens. So, using AMP can rectify this issue.
In short, AMP is expected to be a breakthrough as far as boosting the search engine rankings with respect to mobile devices and websites are concerned.