Everything You Need to Know About: Google AMP Project and How Using Amp Improves Search Rankings

Everything You Need to Know About: Google AMP Project and How Using Amp Improves Search Rankings

Everyone knows that websites take a much longer time to load on mobile devices as opposed to on other systems like desktops and laptops which slows down browsing time and makes searching tough. Google know this and that's why they've invested heavily into AMP technology to speed up and improve mobile loading times and searching experience. Just like the Mobilegeddon update sort of took care of! Well you may already know that Google have already launched its AMP project (Accelerated Mobile Pages) which further adds support for them to reach their goal of making all webpages AMP friendly so they render fast on all mobile devices. Now after a few months of officially launching it, many webmasters, bloggers, affiliate marketers, advertisers and publishers have got all hyped up about AMP and how to use it as it was only available for those Top Stories in the carousel of search results.

That was back in September when they announced they were rolling out AMP support across all organic search results to bring about a new again in the mobile experience. So grab a seat and get amped up as I go over everything that you really need to know about AMP, why it exists, how it works to who can use it. And how Amp can affect your SEO rankings and more.

What is AMP?
AMP = Accelerated Mobile Pages. AMP is basically an Open Source put together by web tech companies to improve the ecosystem of mobile content for every including publishers and consumers alike. It basically improves the mobile search UX by providing basic, stripped down version of web pages that would load instantly, but have the minimal of navigation and be uncluttered by ads that don't require a lot of power to show.

How does AMP work?

AMP is a framework that splits and divides into three different parts that make up website pages. These are as follows;

• AMP HTML
  Very similar to HTML but with a limited amount of functionality for good performance for building rich content that goes beyond what normal HTML can do.
• AMP JS Library
  This is a JavaScript framework for mobile pages only that implements all of the best performing practices from AMP and manages the resources of loading times. It also allows for custom tags to make sure there is a fast rendering time for your web page.
• AMP CDN/Cache
  This is one of the reasons web pages are so fast by running sites through  a conditional proxy delivery network that delivers all valid AMP documents only.

Why did Google Make AMP for?On their Webmaster Blog, Google said that they wanted to improve the performance of the mobile web seeing as they often found people left feeling annoyed and frustrated and that would lead to a loss in opportunity to earn more money for their publishers. And the advertisers that use them for that matter too. Google knows that these days they have a lot of competition. So they offer their users speed and proficiency and by doing so maintain their lions share of the search market for users, browsers, publishers and advertisers alike.

Who Can Use AMP?AMP is FTW! (For The World). The AMP project is open to anyone that wants to use it to speed up their website and make it run faster and more efficiently on mobile devices. Most of the biggest websites on the Internet today are using AMP like Buzzfeed, BBC, Flipkart, The Wall Street Journal etc etc. And enjoying the benefits those AMP'd pages bring as well. And now a lot more everyday people are starting to realise this and adopt AMP for this reason too.

What are Some Potential Downsides to AMP?Just like any kind of new technology, AMP has it's pros and cons, ups and downs. It is after all, at the end of the day, just another HTML  type code which requires programming. So you'll need to learn that to be able to make use of it. However, most of ways you would code with it can be done through Addons and Plugins that will surely evolve in the coming future too. Another pitfall to AMP is that when people want to share a link to an AMP'd page, it will always point to a Google URL instead of the actual site URL which can have a negative impact on that sites traffic. Again, this may change/evolve in the future too,.

Does AMP have Analytics?Yes but in a lot smarter way than traditional analytics. It uses a measure once, report to many rule that stops multiple tracking from slowing down your site. You can enable analytics for AMP in two different ways. The AMP-Pixel Element. This is just a tag that can be used in your pages to to count views like a tracking pixel would track them by just using a simple GET request. You can pass through several different variables like DOCUMENT_REFERRER and Title. The AMP-Analytics Extended Component. This one is a little more trickier to implement but does allow for a much better level of configuration for analytics interactions on your site.

Does AMP Affect SEO?AMP isn't yet an actual Search Engine Ranking factor but it can have a massive impact on the speed of your site which IS  a ranking factor. If you compared two identical sites that compared the same for every other factor other than having and using AMP, the one with AMP would be faster and would rank higher from the two. Compare the loading times for AMP: Amp pages take about 0.7 seconds to load but non-AMP pages take about 22.0 seconds to load on mobile devices. That's about the time it takes for a user to leave your site and never return to it!

Another thing to consider is how AMP can have a direct influence on your ranking in the search results. Because if you have an AMP page that gets more clicks and fewer bounce rates Google will be able to see this and and work out the value it has to its users which will likely result in your site getting improved rankings for it 

Is AMP the Future of Mobile Internet?It's looking very likely yes, and it's likely that AMP is going to develop, grow and evolve into other things such as an official ranking factor. But we must remember that not everything that Google has rolled out has been a huge success and was eventually shelved. Take Authorship Markup for example. Do you remember it? That's my point. However, AMP is much less proprietary than Facebook's Instant Articles or even that of Apple News. AMP could very well end up being the best thing that mobile site owners and content publishers do for their website and for people and the Internet as a whole. And that gets my full support!


And that is everything You Need to Know About: Google AMP Project and How Using Amp Improves Search Rankings. More or less! I hope that this has been insightful and informative to you!

Are you using AMP in your web pages now?

Are you seeing improved rankings because of it?

What do you think is the future of AMP?

Is AMP the future of mobile web?

Cheers!

Mike.