Google has been releasing a series of algorithm updates that are making it hard for the website owners. Like every update, it targets a specific constraint that web publishers need to optimize their website for their audience. One such popular update is the Google mobile-first indexing. To satisfy the parameters of Google mobile-first indexing, website owners and bloggers started to implement the AMP strategy. In this guide, you will understand what is AMP and what is AMP used for.
Implementation of AMP is making way for website optimisation in terms of page speed performance. It is enabling the website to perform faster than compared before. Your pages start to load quicker and it makes a lively experience for your audience. This is what Google algorithm expects outcomes to be achieved.
The AMP is a major factor when it comes to delivering better speed performance. And as we all know that, the speed of the website is one of the major ranking signals. This is the reason you need to understand it in-depth and address all your issues that are affecting the visibility of your site.
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What is AMP?
AMP is a short form for accelerated mobile pages. This concept came to trend when Google initiated an algorithm update that penalized websites that are loading slower. To address this issue, AMP was used to eliminate and require HTML elements from a web page. This resulted in better web page performance as search engines used to pre-render the pages in the Google index server.
The main intention of using a strategy is to make the web page sizes lighter and make it efficient when it comes to loading from any device. As you all know that the load time is slow for mobile devices compared to desktops. This is the reason that brands started implementing AMP for their web pages.
Who is using AMP for their website?
There are quite a few large companies that are implementing AMP strategy for their website. The companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter have released the update so that it creates an engaging experience for end-users.
For Facebook, the most popular platform that is used for instant articles. As publishers can easily post the content which helps in loading quicker across the devices.
It is also popularly found in the Apple News platform. As the media company wanted their publishers to get better reach, AMP was the strategy they used.
Other platforms such as Guardian, Pinterest, and others are also gradually implementing this strategy within their platform. As they want to help the content publishers to get better responses for the posts published on search engines.
Examples of AMP-enabled blog posts
Here is the list of enabled blog posts for reference.
If you can notice it from the image, you can see the flash symbol denoting that the accelerated mobile pages version has been shown on the search result. This is how your blog posts will appear when you integrate AMP for pages.
When you closely notice that even the URL structure will get changed when you use the AMP. You can also cross verify the data by inspecting the element of the page to see whether the page has been integrated with accelerated mobile pages or not.
What are the benefits of using an accelerated mobile page?
Since the Google search engine algorithm update, the accelerated mobile pages concept has become a greater need. Here is the list of advantages of using accelerated mobile pages for your website.
1. Helps in getting traffic from mobile devices
As the Accelerated mobile pages focus on mobile-first indexing policy, Google search engine displays the websites that have been integrated with AMP for the users on mobile devices. You will easily observe that you get tons of traffic from mobile phones. If you already have your audience coming from mobile devices, AMP strategy would be inevitable for scaling the growth.
It also helps in driving better traffic through the users who are browsing from a tablet or iPad. As the search engine understands which is the platform that the accelerated mobile pages enabled pages needs to be pushed.
There are various forms of mobile result pages displayed for website listing on mobile devices. It will be in the form of snippets, carousel-type topics and it is also displayed in the news stories. There are many benefits when it comes to utilizing the AMP for getting traffic from mobile devices.
2. Loads the website faster
The main intention of using accelerated mobile pages is to decrease the page size. This will instantly result in loading your website faster than before. As the strategy is to eliminate all the and unrequired HTML code elements, this will facilitate the web page performance.
You need not worry about the analytics script that you have integrated within the page. The data will not be lost, only the graphics such as animations that you use for web pages are sidelined.
3. Best strategy for news type websites or blog
If you have a website or blog that curates news sources and posts in terms of articles, then the AMP strategy is best to drive a great amount of traffic. As Google favours the news platforms that have been integrated with accelerated mobile pages, the audience can get the information faster.
This is the reason why Google pushes the websites or blogs which have implemented a strategy for their platform.
4. Improve your average keyword ranking position
All the credit goes to the implementation of accelerated mobile pages for a website. As it helps in loading the website faster, you can instantly observe the average keyword ranking position will also get improved. It is due to the Google search engine favouring websites that have better speed bandwidth.
They have integrated the speed of the website as a ranking signal for a blog or website. It has become a greater need for businesses to optimize their website where it facilitates results for organic keyword ranking as well as paid search.
You can also cross-check by yourself by searching for any news-related source. You can notice that the AMP integrated blog posts outrank other web pages that are not enabled.
How do the accelerated mobile pages work on a particular web page?
The accelerated mobile pages are the process of eliminating the HTML elements that are not required for the web page. This helps in reducing the load time which minimises all the animations and graphics from the web page.
If you have an HTML website, you can notice that the HTML code which has been integrated with unique tags will be removed. When it comes to JavaScript, the animations and graphics which are used to render the page will also be eliminated.
When the codes are reduced from CSS and JS files, you can notice that the web page will load faster in an improvement of 1-3 seconds.
The strategy which is used in decreasing load time so that the page is already pre-rendered in the Google index server. The search engine crawler will already generate the page on the server. So whenever a user is searching for a query, Google automatically displays the pre-rendered page.
Here are some of the major factors that the AMP works on:
- The web page has been enabled with a cache that loads faster
- You can notice that all inline CSS and HTML elements requests are being sidelined.
- There will be a size limit for CSS elements of 50 KB.
- Additional emojis and fancy font requests will be declined.
- If you are using a content delivery network, the AMP will automatically code itself by fetching the data.
- Do I need to integrate AMP for my website?
Do I need to integrate AMP for my website?
The accelerated mobile pages strategy is best for news types of websites or blogs. As they will be publishing hundreds of articles in a day that requires a good amount of organic attraction from search engines.
It’s not just limited to the news-related platform. You can integrate this strategy for your business website or a personal blog as well. As accelerated mobile pages are definitely the future when we look at the current rate of people adopting the strategy.
When you can see the traffic coming towards your website and improvement in the average keyword ranking positions, who would not like to integrate AMP for their website?