All That you Need to Know about Google AMP

Recently, Google announced the introduction of AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages project, a new open source platform aiming to drastically improve the performance of mobile web. Emergence of this open source platform created buzz in the world of SEO practitioners and web marketers, to a great extent.

Let’s find out how much this platform is needed to raise high in the search engine rankings and when you should incorporate such pages for your business.

What AMP Exactly Means?

Simply speaking, AMP is a stripped down version of the mobile web that runs on a reinvented version of the language used to create web pages; HTML. The re-imagined version of HTML is referred to as AMP HTML. The actual aim behind this platform is to provide an improved and better user experience to those who access web through mobile devices.

According to Google, a page created with AMP HTML can load much faster than that of the non-AMP pages. Besides, they have also made it easier for the publishers to get started in AMP. Google has already started highlighting AMP enabled pages in its mobile search results. This means that when you will search for a news item, Google will show you a roundabout that marks stories on AMP enabled sites. When you will click on a page in the carousel, Google will load the page and you will also get the option of swiping left and right to jump to the other stories. Isn’t that great?

How does this affect Marketers?

As the update came out, web pages which provide an optimized mobile experience started achieving high ranking, as Google allows those pages to provide an improved on-line experience. It is because of the faster loading time for AMP, bounce rates became better even if weak site performance impacted bounce rates.

AMP Pages are Good for Search Engine Rankings

After the emergence of Mobilegeddon update last year, we became aware of the fact that mobile friendliness is a vital factor in search rankings. Sites that pass mobile friendly test appear in top position in the search results and unfriendly pages loose their stand within a short span of time.

Accelerated mobile pages are designed to load quickly and deliver great user experience on mobile. AMP sites are always highlighted with green lightning bolt, encouraging users to visit those sites for fast and satisfactory service.

AMP Pages Receive More Page Views and Ad Views

Factually, 40% of web users will not visit a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Faster loading pages refer to more page views and more ads. Google is making sure that AMP traffic can be analyzed and quantified just like the regular web pages. AMP also has in-built native support for Google analytics, but you can also make use of partners like comScore, Adobe Analytics and so on.

Should You Incorporate AMP To Your Business?

Basically, this depends on how much of your traffic comes from mobile devices. In some sectors, mobile devices make up less than 10 % of traffic. But if mobile supports the upper end of your business, majority traffic will come from mobile devices and this is when you need accelerated mobile pages for your business. A quick glance at the analytic package will let you know the device split of your traffic.