Accelerated Mobile Pages – Does Your Website Need It?

Do you really need to AMP-lify your website in 2019? If you are unfamiliar, let’s first understand what AMP is and how it affects your website’s performance. AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, developed as an open source project by Google to improve mobile web performance.

AMP lets you build web pages that render fast, especially on mobile. To put it simply, it is a way to offer better mobile user experience with readable content, giving you more opportunities to engage with your visitors with AMP Page Development Services.

AMP: The Technical Aspects

40% of mobile users abandon a site it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Today, users expect websites to load faster on their mobile devices, and so does Google. That’s why it rolled out mobile-first index in 2017 as a way to rank websites. As the name suggests, mobile-first indexing means Google will use the mobile version of the page’s content to rank and index websites.

This means a site that is optimized for mobile search will be considered for the mobile-first index by Google. And, the search engine giant prefers AMP content while ranking pages when a user searches for a specific keyword or phrase. Remember, the ultimate goal of Google is to provide what users are searching for, both in terms of relevancy and user experience. Your website must fulfill these two factors if you wish to rank at the top of SERPs, attract more visitors, and convert them into buying customers.

So, how do AMPs really work?

AMPs are developed using AMP HTML, which makes the content load faster than pages built using complex frameworks and standard HTML. AMP HTML contains custom AMP-related commands that are 6x lighter in code.

AMP websites also need AMP JS. It is a new JavaScript (JS) framework which helps in asynchronous loading of external resources. Some of the things that AMP JS will control in AMP-enabled pages include giving custom tags to the users, pre-calculating all the elements in a page layout, disabling slow CSS selectors and sandboxing all iframes.

AMP Content Delivery Network (CDN) also forms an integral part of developing an AMP website. It helps in caching AMP-optimized content for faster delivery.

Accelerated Mobile Pages Advantages

Let’s take a look at the advantages of having AMP pages:

• Boost in Ranking: AMP pages get a substantial boost in search engine result pages (SERPs). Mobile-responsiveness and faster page speed are two important ranking factors used by search engines like Google. Since accelerated mobile pages are specifically designed to load quickly on mobile, AMP sites are sure to get ranked higher in the SERPS.

 

• Increased Visibility: AMPs are generally four times faster than standard web pages and twice as fast as compared to mobile-friendly websites. AMPs use inline style sheets that explicitly remove multiple HTTP requests, thereby improving page load time. With faster page speed, your site will get a ranking boost, improving its overall search visibility.

 

• More Engagement: AMPs improve your search rankings and enhance SEO visibility, which can lead to more site traffic, more clicks, and more engagement with potential customers.

 

• Improved Conversions: According Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, 90% of publishers using AMPs have a higher Click Through Rate (CTR). Higher CTR means more on-site conversions. Another research found that eCommerce sites have shown significant improvement in their conversion rates and a decrease in bounce rates after using AMP functionality.

Should you use AMPs?

AMP is all about page speed on mobile. It is definitely beneficial for news websites and for your site’s blog posts, news entries, informational pages and other forms of content. AMP can be used for other pages as well such as product pages, ad landing pages, and category pages.

More advertisers are looking to earn higher revenue by using AMP-optimized pages. Some of the most popular ad networks that are using the AMP-ads include Amazon A9, Flite, Google AdSense, AdReactor, plista, and Taboola just to name a few.

Is it time to build an AMP site?

AMP pages are designed to build fast pages that are easier to implement. Building an AMP site requires a thoughtful approach. Since developing an AMP-enabled mobile site needs AMP HTML, AMP-ADD tags, inline style sheets, optimized images and videos, and custom styling through CSS, you need expert AMP developers to create and implement accelerated mobile pages.

By creating a special web application with AMP functionality, your website’s response time, mobile user engagement, and conversions will increase. Seek help from a reliable AMP Development Company in India if you are considering building AMP version of your existing or new website.  

Conclusion

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is not a ranking factor now, but it is bound to change in the future. Developing AMPs for your online business can help you stay ahead of the curve. As more searches are happening on mobile devices than desktop, and the ratio is now 60/40, it seems AMP-lifying your website is going to be a worthwhile move.