accelerated-mobile-pages-amp-fast-web-pages

AMP: What You Should Know About Accelerated Mobile Pages

Accelerated Mobile Pages What The Heck Are They?

Imagine your website page being displayed on a mobile device in its entire form. What AMP does is strip back some of the elements of your website page to show a clean, fast-loading lite version of your web page. Once you add AMP to your website, the display will show as the bare essentials on a mobile device.

AMP reduces load times and the functions that happen on the backend of a website. Lowering server requests by limiting tags, lazy loading and lazy rendering and Streamlining the CSS and JS components. In short, it’s an HTML page designed to be lightweight and re-designs your web pages to re-create really streamlined pages that are easy to use and don’t keep the browser waiting.

Accelerated Mobile Pages are also known as AMP

Before we get into this it might help if I give you a demo of what an AMP page looks like on your mobile device.

enter this into your browser on your mobile then type in a website to see what an AMP looks like. AMP Page demo.

AMP is built thanks to a deep collaboration with thousands of developers, publishers and websites, distribution platforms and tech companies. More than 1.5B AMP pages have been published to date and 100+ leading analytics, ad tech and CMS providers support the AMP format.

Accelerated Mobile Pages and Facebook Instant Articles

I know you have been hit with the “Mobile Optimise” for better rankings and online UX before and now there is AMP, but AMP is here for the long term with more and more users taking to mobile browsing every day the future is headed towards mobile search. The AMP project focus is aimed to make people’s experience on the mobile web not only faster but an overall smoother experience by removing the clutter from web pages to show the main focus content.

Facebook is well known for being a trendsetter but being edged out by Google on Instant articles it has joined the race launching Facebook Instant Article’s to improve its UX with its millions-strong mobile user audience hungry for information daily harnessing this new publishing solution makes sense for them to give their audience what they want.

Facebook Instant Articles is another way for publishers to create faster interactive articles for user satisfaction streamlining the most popular news on the web is a huge business and in the famous words of Ricky Bobby “if you’re not first you’re last!” Brands are scrambling to implement the new solution looking at getting the upper hand on the competition.

Higher Performance and Engagement When You Use AMP.

What AMP Will Provide For Your Website?

The AMP project is an open-source effort spearheaded by juggernauts Google & Twitter.

to speed up our mobile web experience. Even though many websites today are mobile-friendly, they still tend to be very sluggish, and clunky, and that’s where AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) comes in.

  • Provide A Better Browsing Experience
  • Provide a Clean Display
  • Loads Very Fast
  • Carousel Display in Search Results

In order to provide these improvements, on the mobile display, some features your website has will be stripped back to the bare basics. Your website will be shown as the lite version so not every function will activate.

Flexibility and Results

The ability for publishers & advertisers to have some input and control on how to present their content and what technology vendors to use can make a noticeable impact on the way media is shared across the web. The faster load times and cleaner displays mean better access and simplified consumption of information.

Improvements for advertisers is that web pages and ads published in the AMP open-source format load near instantly. These instant load times are giving users a smooth, more engaging experience on mobile and desktop. When the website is clunky and hard to read the user is more likely to leave that website.

The main benefits of having AMP on your site is that it benefits both users and your website because AMP provides a faster more streamlined experience to your content, which means it makes it easier to read your content.

Even though Google hasn’t come out to say it helps search rankings for your website yet, we are confident that it will soon be a ranking factor as AMP only helps improve a user’s experience, and makes it easier to get access to content. Also if you haven’t noticed, AMP posts appear in the carousel first above the other stories.

Google was the early adopter and since many social media and news platforms have joined the accelerated mobile pages revolution — kind of in response to projects like the Facebook Instant Articles project from Facebook and Apple News and many more popping up daily. This is designed to be open-source, and there are all kinds of elements of openness to the project when you list it as open source.

Will Accelerated Mobile Pages Affect My Google Listings?

Currently Mobile search results the answer is YES, on desktop search listings the answer is NO. The aim of accelerated mobile pages is to provide a more lightweight mobile browsing experience and focusing on mobile search.  So let’s talk a little bit about how this might actually show up in search results. So first of all, what we know at the moment is it’s looking like it’s mobile-only. It’s right there in the name, Accelerated Mobile Pages and should not impact the desktop search listings or browsing experience. ,

One noticeable change I’ve noticed is news publisher’s and heavy content producer’s showing up in a carousel above the regular listings. It appears as if Google is giving them priority over other results. The carousel moves from right to left and vice versa with a swipe function either way moving through results. If you click on one of these it opens in an expanded view providing more detail and is very smooth in appearance.

Some Results Since AMP Rollout That We Have Seen:

  • Some PPC Ads Are Showing As AMP
  • AMP Is For Mobile Only Not Desktop
  • AMP Displays A Carousel For Top Results

The looming mobile-first index will have a benefit for AMP verified websites. Google announced that they are going to use a mobile-first index. This means that they are moving towards user first search terms. Mobile-friendly and optimised websites will be extremely important for the future of search. We noticed this as it happened and began rolling out Mobile SEO services helping clients prepare for this new way Google is moving towards.

It is actually taking place where some paid advertising would normally be positioned for some terms. Not all Adwords ads are showing as AMP but with the rollout, the kinks are still being smoothed over. The question could be asked will there be paid AMP search results? and what placement will they take and the benefits and so on for having these over generic paid ads?

Below is a brief demo of AMP in Google search.

What makes AMP so fast?

The removal of unnecessary items, not loading images until they are near view using a streamlined version of CSS and removing some HTML tags. The pure reader satisfaction focus is increased readability without pop-ups and opt ins, page loading times, and a more slimline design.

Look to the future with the potential for a built-in javascript library built into some of the more popular operating systems potentially removing the need for more load times to access this making sites even faster to load. There will be a time that your content may be stored on the browser so the need to “fetch” data is made redundant, This may be some time away but it is a direction that is possible with the advancement in browsing and web use we want it fast we want it now and being able to provide that is the goal for smart marketers.

How do I add AMP to my website?

If you have a website that uses WordPress as its CMS , the easiest way to get started is by simply installing one the following plugins both are very good to use.

This plugin allows posts on your site to become both AMP pages, and compatible with Facebook Instant articles.

Google is not the only company looking to add to Instant articles see below for Facebook Instant Article’s. This trend for faster and better will continue as our technology and consumer habits shift.

Facebook’s Instant Articles The Social AMP Alternative.

For Facebook Instant Articles, you will have to first sign up your page in order to have it enabled for your posts right here.

Marketing online is changing to ease of access the here and now, Amazon prime order now delivered in 8 hours or less. attract and retain consumer interest by providing amazing content that not only looks nice but loads fast for your mobile audience

Conclusion

Mobile technology and web browsers are only going to increase in advanced features, think virtual reality and augmented reality.  Adapting to consumer trends is smart and your business should consider moving towards mobile-first marketing.

Retain customers and attract new customers by being ready for these types of changes. Think Video Ezy and Blockbuster in the age of Netflix and Stan, they couldn’t adjust and now they are being left behind.

Do these three things to prepare your website:

  1. Prepare Your Website For AMP
  2. Use A AMP Plugin (WordPress)
  3. Validate Your AMP markup with this free tool.

Start by getting familiar with AMP and how it works across devices. This is a simple process and you should not have to change to much on your website. Take the first step forward and understand why you need to consider mobile viewing and why AMP will help you supercharge your website views.

Keep up to date with the AMP project right here to see what the coming months look like for the project.


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