Keeping Up With Google AMP

Overview

In the fast-paced realm of online content, speed and user experience reign supreme. Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) framework has emerged as a game-changer, revolutionising the way we consume information on mobile devices. This blog post dives into the intricacies of AMP, offering insights on its significance, benefits, and practical implementation. Discover how AMP ensures lightning-fast page loading, elevated user engagement, and improved search visibility. Only 25% of SEO professionals have currently implemented Google AMP onto their website according to Search Engine Journal. The new requirement from Google is one of the largest changes in the history of search engine optimization. For a technology with the potential to disrupt search traffic, Google’s mobile search tool has not been popular with a lot of SEO elite. That is troubling and indicative of the long road Google has for greater adoption of this mobile technology. Since we first discussed the launch of Google AMP last year, a lot has changed. Below we review what Google AMP is and how to use it for your website to increase mobile traffic to your site.

What is Google AMP?

AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. The project in Googles words envisions a future where, “publishers can create mobile optimized content once and have it load instantly everywhere.” Current studies show the average mobile website takes around 8 seconds to load. Consumers have way less patience. Many bounce off a site after 3 seconds. Google AMP helps websites owners improve their site speed by stripping a lot of the coding and add-ons from your website, as well as caches your site. This enables your site to load on Google in half a second. This stripped down site drives more search traffic because Google values site speed in their algorithm to improve your search rankings. Just be patient with the results, you will probably not see your new AMP pages indexed for a few days to weeks based on previous experience. That is because Google has to index these pages just like they would any other website page.

How Can You Use Google AMP?

1. Add Google AMP code to your site- Fortunately, WordPress users are in luck! Automattic, the company that created WordPress also created an AMP plugin to help their users install Google AMP on their sites.

This means you do not need to know code to use AMP for your WordPress site. It is a few clicks to install, and you are set. You might also want to install Glue for YOAST SEO AMP on your AMP pages to optimise AMP pages. If you do not have WordPress and are not sure how to install AMP, then give us a Shout! Our developers can help you install Google AMP on your site!  

2. Google News- Search Engine Journal also mentioned how they found it interesting that the majority of their AMP traffic comes from Google News Stand.

This is the News section of Google Play. It makes sense that Google integrated AMP pages with their Android app first. For publishers looking to be listed on the mobile platform, sign up in the Google Newsstand Publisher section using your RSS feed. They could not find their AMP pages in traditional search results. This should change in the future, but is now a Google News only tool.

3. Adjust your site content- While many of the features you use on your website are available on AMP Pages, some features are modified and other are missing.

For example, AMP pages do not include contact forms or comments. Additionally, you might need to tag your images and videos with AMP specific tags to help AMP know what features to show on their pages. This varies whether you use an amp-anim for GIFS or amp-youtube for YouTube videos. Either way, this adds a lot more work to your publishing schedule. This is where WordPress is so helpful. The plugins we discussed above, automatically tags elements on your posts. In the end, this limits the content you can create on your posts. However, it improves the amount of traffic if you get into the Google AMP game now before your competitors.

Final Thoughts

Google AMP is still in the beginning stages. While it holds plenty of possibility for blazing fast speeds for your mobile content, it could also be another in Google’s long line of spectacular failures. If you have a WordPress site there is no reason to not implement the plugin and measure the difference in your search traffic. If you need additional help or have further questions about how to use Google AMP for your business contact us today for a free consulting session.