Accelerated Mobile Pages, The Modern Need Of Website Optimization

By Author: navyanavvi
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With almost 80% of search queries coming from mobile platforms, Google has been implementing new ways to make the mobile search experience more streamlined and convenient for its users. One of the most drastic moves to facilitate this was the introduction of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

AMP, short for Accelerated Mobile Pages, is an open-source initiative and format by Google with the aim to speed up the web experience for mobile users. AMP pages are essentially stripped-down versions of pages that are optimized to load fast on mobile devices.

How do Accelerated Mobile Pages work?

Unlike its direct competitor (Facebook Instant Articles), AMP is an open-source framework that is very easy to access. A page can be AMP-enabled by modifying the website’s HTML code with certainly specified tags or by implementing a specialized JavaScript framework. But even if you don’t have any experience with coding, you can still implement AMP if you use a CMS platform like WordPress. Just by installing a Google AMP WordPress plugin that is easily available, you can make your page AMP-optimised and help it load faster.

How ...
... to implement AMP:

Implementing AMP requires you to make your pages available in an alternative format according to the specifications of the AMP standard. This means that the AMP version of your pages will exist alongside your regular pages. The AMP specifications are well documented and easily accessible but may require development resources for implementation. Fortunately, AMP extensions for well-known Content Management Systems such as WordPress are springing up here and there, making the implementation significantly simpler.

When implementing AMP it’s paramount to stick closely to the specifications and to validate your AMP pages before publishing. After publishing your AMP pages it’s a good idea to run them through Google’s AMP testing tool. Also, make sure you have your website verified in Google Search Console. There you’ll receive feedback from Google on your implementation of AMP.

Benefits of AMP to SEO:

Accelerated mobile pages have a huge impact and all in good ways on SEO. Below mentioned are some of the benefits that SEO can get from it.

– The publishing sites benefit the most from it because it helps in providing higher ranks and also makes it easier for a large mass of people to reach your service or product.

– You can either transit your whole site with Accelerated mobile pages or you can simply just apply on a few sections such as updates or news etc.

– Ranks of the site will get increased and your site will be known by more number of people.

– People will find it easy to browse your site and hence you will get more traffic with the passing days.

– Sites will become more responsive to mobiles.

– The main benefit provided by accelerated mobile pages is that the pages or sites will instantly show up on the Google news carousel which means you will get much more attention than usual from the online browsers.

– Not only your speed will increase and ranks will hike but even your bounce rate will experience reduction and that would prove very beneficial for your site.

– Accelerated mobile pages also support a variety of ad networks, formats, and technologies.

– Accelerated mobile pages allow you to track your visitors and help you make conversions. This way you will get to know about the improvements in your site.

Cons of AMPs :

In the infancy of any project, putting together all the pieces is a sizeable undertaking. There are still moving parts to the AMP Project that make implementation and execution a challenge, including:

1) JavaScript & CSS Limitations

For the most part, AMPs contain very little in the way of branding and individuality. That’s in large part because load times suffer greatly when web designers use JavaScript and, to a lesser extent, CSS. By minimizing flashy extras, mobile pages speed up significantly, but it puts a strain on your branding and style.

2) Tracking Problems

AMPs don’t work with your already implemented tracking. They are stored and tracked differently than standard pages, even mobile-ready ones. Solutions are bound to appear, but at the moment, tracking takes special effort and resources that you may not have immediately available.

3) Serving Cached Pages

One of the ways that AMP makes pages load so fast is that it allows Google to serve a cached version of an AMP-enabled page to users. The pages that appear in search results are held by Google, which means you’re not even serving up the content you originally created – it’s only a copy cached and stored elsewhere.

4) Implementation Is Not Straightforward

Though implementing AMP Project guidelines is designed to be user-friendly, conflicting information and consistent updating of the standard can make it confusing. Though some content management systems (CMSs), such as WordPress, have AMP-integration tools available, they often conflict with popular SEO tools like Yoast. Implementing AMP isn’t easy – yet.