The AMP Project has been controversial since its launch.
It promises what is essentially a website that loads quickly and has a higher ranking on Google searches, but in exchange you have to use a simplified version of HTML.
This means making your website more appealing to users by reducing its size.
There are many success stories, but for many others, the implementation was done carelessly and the results are confusing.
Leaving the marketing industry with this question:
Is AMP important for SEO?
Today, we delve into whether AMP is worth it by looking at:
- What is AMP?
- What are the pros and cons?
- How to optimize AMP
- What sites should implement AMP
- How to measure the impact
While the AMP framework can be used for things like Web Stories (also known as AMP Stories), AMP Email, and AMP Ads, these are all still in development.
What Is AMP?
AMP pages are designed to be lightweight and load quickly on mobile devices. They are more engaging than traditional pages and provide a faster, more enjoyable experience for mobile users.
It provides a way to create webpages that load quickly and smoothly while prioritizing the user experience.
To create a mobile-friendly version of a website using AMP, designers strip down existing HTML5 content and optimize it for mobile devices.
When there is an AMP alternative available, the user is served the AMP version of the page, instead of the canonical page.
The goal of Google Accelerated Mobile Pages is similar to that of Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News – to make mobile content quicker and simpler to consume.
The key difference between the formats?
AMP supports the distribution of content across the internet without having to go through a specific app for each platform.
And This Is Where It Gets Political
Let’s start with “open source.”
This is technically true.
The project is supported by WordPress, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Bing, to name a few.
Although Google is not the only company involved in the development of the Android platform, it is the biggest code contributor and promoter. People often refer to Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages project as “Google AMP.”
AMP enforces restrictions on ads and user interface design to prioritize the user experience.
- Limiting CSS to 75KB.
- Limiting JavaScript to 150KB.
- Moving all the fluff out of the critical rendering path.
The restrictions mentioned above are enough to make webpages fast, but that’s not the only reason they are instant.
Here’s the Rather Technical Part
To achieve the lightning load speed, AMP pages are sent to be hosted on Google’s servers. This allows Google to offer a CDN, which many AMP sites use, resulting in pages loading from Google’s servers instead of the original site’s servers.
This enables Google to store, load in advance, and render AMP content before a user clicks on a link in the search results.
When users click AMP content in Google, it may be displayed in either a “Google AMP view” or a “canonical view.”
- Google AMP Viewer: Where the source of the content publisher is displayed at the top, but the URL remains a Google domain.
- Signed exchange (SXG): Which allows the browser to treat the page as if it belongs to your domain. Signed AMP content is delivered in addition to, rather than instead of, regular AMP HTML. Out of the two, Google will prioritize linking to the signed content but only for browsers that support it, which is currently only Chrome, and only for standard results, not top stories carousel. This makes the scope of SXG rather limited.
In essence, Google can control how websites are created and financed, thus dictating how the internet is used.
google’s recent actions have been criticized by many in the tech and SEO industries. These actions are seen as an attempt by Google to exert further control over the web.
Despite the criticism, some website developers are still attracted to AMP because of its potential benefits.
Advantages of AMP Pages
There are many potential advantages of using AMP on your website, such as reducing data consumption, improving server performance, using a free CDN, and increasing ad viewability.
Faster Page Load Times
While AMP itself isn’t a ranking factor, speed is.
This text is discussing how 2021 is especially important for websites to focus on ‘core web vitals’ – a set of metrics that help to assess the quality of a website’s user experience. These metrics will become a ranking factor in Google’s search algorithm, meaning that websites who score poorly in these areas could see a drop in their search engine ranking.
The load time can be dramatically improved if the instructions are followed correctly.
Google claims that an AMP page loads in less than one second on average. This is well within the core web vital requirements.
Plus, speed often has a run-on effect of a more optimized user experience, witnessed by:
- Lower bounce rates.
- Higher time on site.
- Increased conversion rates.
Additional Visibility in Google Search Results
Pages that use AMP technology always appear with an improved look in Google search results on mobile devices.
The Lighting Bolt Icon in Google SERPs
This means that your page has been validated by Google and is considered to be a high-performing AMP page. The lighting bolt icon in Google SERPs indicates that the page has been validated by Google and is considered a high-performing AMP page.
An SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a person who makes a website easier to find on the internet. This designation (AMP) increases the click-through rate of pages, which means that users are more likely to find the webpage they are looking for.
There is no significant evidence to support the idea that this will result in an increase for most industries.
If you want to increase your chances of getting rich results on Google, you should use AMP and structured data.
In addition to increasing your chances of appearing in a host carousel, using AMP in combination with valid structured data also makes it more likely that you will appear with rich features such as headline text and larger-than-thumbnail images.
Although AMP is not compulsory for these enhanced features.
Swipe to Visit
So basically, if you see an image in Google Images that you like, you can now swipe up on it to visit the page that image is on without having to go back to the main Google Images page and click on the image again. So basically, if you see an image in Google Images that you like, you can now swipe up on it to visit the page that image is on directly, without having to go back to the main Google Images page and click on the image again.
But that is set to change in 2021 with the Core Web Vitals update to allow both AMP and non-AMP pages, with ranking focused on-page experience metrics.
AMP Disadvantages
If you’re looking to improve your website’s search engine ranking and user engagement, AMP enabled on your site is a great option. However, like all technology, there are some downfalls to using AMP. Before you enableSSL on your site, you should understand these issues.
The AMP platform doesn’t support custom code or anything that isn’t supported by the system. If you have widgets, custom scripts, or added JavaScript on your current website, they may not work on an AMP version of the site. The technology is supported by some of the biggest tech companies in the world but it still takes time to support all of the plugins and custom scripts on the market. If the script doesn’t have enough of a following, it might never get the support it needs and could break your site when readers view it.
Another issue is with ad systems. Your site needs special coding in order to be able to work with ad servers and figure out how much money you’ve earned. When systems are stripped down to minimal code, they don’t always work well. Mobile users browsing your site will result in it having less value. If your website ranks well, you may still need other ways to make money from it using AMP.
When to use AMP?
When deciding whether or not to use AMP pages, digital marketers often ask themselves two questions: “When should I use AMP?” and “Do AMP pages convert better than non-AMP pages?” AMP can be used in the following cases: -when both parties to a contract have a common understanding of the contract’s subject matter -when the contract is for the sale of goods or services -when both parties to the contract have a mutual intention to be bound by the contract
- When mobile devices are the major source of your traffic – Over the period of 10 years (2009-2018), as per the data collected by Statcounter, the market share of mobile users have increased to 54% whereas the share of desktop users declined to 46.If the majority of your website’s traffic comes from mobile, then catering to the needs of the mobile web users is more important than ever before. The AMP project was created because of shifting patterns of users from desktop to mobiles. AMP is perfect to optimize mobile-first strategy and amp in SEO help in attracting and retaining mobile traffic with better page performance.So, AMP must be on your radar to enhance user experience and to stay ahead of the competition in the market.
- To increase your page load speed – Primary goal of AMP framework is to improve mobile page load speed. Websites that have AMP enabled, load almost in just tenths of the second whereas normal pages take on an average 22 seconds to load.
- When your bounce rate is high – According to digital marketing experts, you only have 3 seconds to capture the interest of the visitors who clicked in the link to visit your website. If your page takes more than 3 seconds to load, as much as 53% of visitors will bounce from the page and 79% will abandon the site.AMP is crucial for a website because an increase in page load speed improves overall usability and engagement, which eventually convinces users to be on your website longer.
Integrating the AMP Plugin
In order to use the AMP plugin, you need to select an alternative format for all your web pages. The format you select should match the requirements of your AMP standard. The existence of both AMP-optimized and non-optimized versions of your site shows that you are AMP-ready, but not fully AMP-optimized. Non-AMP pages can still be accessed and used alongside the AMP-optimized pages.
This AMP plugin helps improve the loading speed by interfering with the HTML code tag manager and eliminating any aspects that might cause slow loading. If your pages include JavaScript, it will not be rendered in your AMPs.
Although the AMP requirements are clearly laid out and easy to find, you may need to allocate some development resources to actually fulfilled them.
There are many AMP plugins available for popular Content Management Systems like WordPress, so it is easy to implement. You can use extensions to add videos to your page.
It is important to keep to the specifications and make sure the pages that have been AMP-rendered are checked for mistakes before they are published. Google’s AMP testing tool can help ensure that your pages are properly formatted for their AMP requirements.
This is vital so Google can communicate with your site Additionally, make sure your site is verified with Google Search Console. This is essential so Google can communicate with your site. Google has introduced a new way for you to get feedback about your AMP integration.
With AMP-rendered pages, forms are not accepted. Make sure your site is easy for a search engine to distinguish between your regular pages and your AMP pages.
It is recommended that custom fonts be loaded in order to improve the user experience. So that your photos don’t look funny, you should list the required height and width. The main things to consider when installing the AMP plugin are how easy the content is to read and how quickly it loads, as well as whether or not people can share it.
Most share buttons are created by JavaScript, which means that some might not display correctly.
You can easily add AMP to your WordPress site in only 5 minutes. All you need to do is follow the few simple steps mentioned below:
- Start by installing the AMP WordPress Plugin by Automattic
- Now, activate the plugin. What it will do is append amp to all your pages, but it will not redirect mobile visitors to your amp pages.
- After installing the plugin, the next step is editing your .htaccess file by using any FTP program.
- Now, you can check if your AMP pages are working by pasting the code mentioned below in your .htaccess file.
You need to edit the CSS to make your AMP pages look like your regular pages. If you want to change something in the CSS of your amp plugin, you can go to your wp-content -> plugins -> amp -> template.php using FTP.
How to Enable AMP on WordPress
If you want a custom website, you will need to find a developer who is familiar with AMP and how to set it up in Google Search Console. If you have WordPress, you can use plugins to easily add AMP. You can use the AMP plugin by Automatic to enable AMP on your WordPress site.
After you install the plugin, you need to decide how you want the site to look for your readers. Yoast SEO’s glue also allows for AMP configurations to help improve your blog posts.
If you want to manage your AMP pages in Google, go to Google Search Console and choose “Search Appearance” and then “Accelerated Mobile Pages.” This will help you view each page’s success.
Google crawls on its own, so there’s no need to take any additional action. After creating mobile-friendly pages, it can take a few weeks for them to be indexed by Google. However, once they are indexed, they should appear as results when searches are performed from mobile devices. You can optimize all or some of your pages for AMP. If your pages are small and don’t rely on ads or multiple custom scripts, AMP will work well for you. The contact pages on your website are effective at collecting leads and information from potential clients.
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