Just a few short years ago, it was rare to have a great mobile web experience.
You may remember some of the frustrations early on. Pages were cluttered, scrolling was slow and it seemed to take forever just to load the site in the first place.
But as more users become attached to their smartphones and tablets, mobile is considered as important, if not more so, than desktop browsing.
Users want to experience the full spectrum of a website’s content in the palm of their hand and are willing to make a purchase on the spot with the proper channels in place.
Google Accelerated Mobile Pages is a game-changing technology that delivers a huge speed and accessibility boosts to your site’s mobile experience, plus an SEO advantage.
Let’s explore exactly what Google AMP is, and how it can help your brand thrive on mobile.
Google AMP Basics
Around 2015, Google saw the trend toward mobile browsing accelerate rapidly. Smartphone technology had improved, Wi-Fi was ubiquitous, and mobile payments were now the norm.
But the mobile browsing experience was still lagging for many pages, so Google introduced AMP in 2016 with the intent of raising the bar.
At its core, AMP is an open-source HTML framework designed to help web publishers make mobile-friendly pages that load quickly and easily on any device.
This is accomplished by removing many of the heavier HTML and JavaScript resources typically required to provide a rich browsing experience on desktop browsers.
The idea is that by stripping a page down to its most essential components, it will deliver the same amount of value to the user without excessive load times.
Since then, Google has made numerous minor improvements to the AMP framework, allowing publishers to branch out into different forms of content and reap the benefits.
Here are some of the key technical aspects of AMP:
- Pages are optimized for near-instant download speeds.
- Multiple HTTP requests are removed to streamline communication between web browsers and servers, and only one inline style sheet is required.
- Web fonts are downloaded automatically without additional server communication.
- Style and layout recalculations are minimized dramatically.
- Images are loaded and processed by the graphics chip rather than the CPU.
- Static layouts allow web pages to load faster since browsers already know exactly how much content, and what type, is about to download.
- Social media posts from sites like Twitter are embedded and optimized to view on-page.
- AMP webpages can load up to 4x faster, using 8x less data than traditional pages.
With so many aspects of your pages streamlined for mobile, the speed boosts are significant, and even a few extra seconds can mean a world of difference from a user perspective.
Improved User Experience
The biggest advantage of AMP-enhanced web pages is a vastly improved browsing experience for users on smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices.
Research shows that the faster a site loads, the more likely a visitor is to stay on the page, click around to other parts of the website, and ultimately make a purchase.
One study found that after implementing AMP, 90 percent of publishers saw a higher engagement rate on their mobile pages, while 80 percent saw improved viewability rates.
Considering that 53 percent of sites are abandoned if they take more than three seconds to load, it makes sense that AMP has a drastic impact on engagement.
Marketers have observed a clear correlation between a page’s load time and the bounce rate, indicating that most users are not willing to wait around, and would rather go elsewhere.
While the median load time for a traditional desktop page on mobile is over ten seconds, the average AMP page loads in under a second. That is a huge upgrade.
And remember, just because a page is made “light-weight” with AMP, that doesn’t mean it loses the key message and information of your site.
Visitors still absorb all the most important aspects of your page, learn about your product, and are way more likely to become a customer as a result.
Furthermore, users are way more likely to stay on a site for longer if they know each page will load fast and deliver a solid experience.
From the homepage to the checkout process, AMP is a major upgrade for users.
Now that marketers can utilize systems like AdWords and Analytics on their AMP pages, they can use more tactics and techniques to improve the experience further.
Increased Search Engine Results
When the long-awaited mobile-first indexing update was introduced by Google in early 2020, it confirmed many of the predictions about the SEO benefits of AMP.
Web publishers now had a reason to implement AMP as widely as possible, since it clearly made an impact on how mobile pages ranked in search.
In other words, the faster a page loads on mobile, the better it will rank on Google.
The mobile-first index actually overrides the desktop index, so there is nothing to lose by upgrading as many pages as possible with AMP.
We know that speed matters in Google rankings, but with AMP, you get the added advantage of an improved appearance in the search results, which only helps boost your clicks.
AMP-enhanced pages are adorned with a small yet visible lightning bolt symbol when they appear on the search engine results page, which communicates to the user that their experience will be faster, smoother, and more enjoyable.
There is a higher likelihood that AMP pages are showcased in the “featured stories” section of Google, meaning you could be among the lucky few put in this prized position.
AMP pages are also given priority in the coveted results carousel at the top of the results page, and the majority of popular search queries (think popcorn, probiotics, pocketbooks) are engineered to show AMP pages above all.
Who Should Use Google AMP?
Although AMP was originally intended for text-based news articles and on-site content pages like blogs, it expanded into new territory over time.
Now, media-rich pages that include video, images, and interactive assets can all benefit from faster load times and smoother browsing.
This means that nearly every brand can implement AMP to a positive effect – it’s no longer just for content publishers and news aggregators.
Product pages, customer reviews, and checkout experiences are all made faster with AMP, provided you meet Google’s latest standards.
Whether your brand is new to the web or a veteran in need of some mobile SEO fuel, AMP is a great way to step things up in the mobile ranks.
However, marketers should not forget the fundamentals of SEO and expect to achieve a miraculous rankings increase when adopting AMP.
You still need to focus on producing strong content, a rich catalog of quality backlinks, and a site that truly helps users find the information and products they need.
AMP is like icing on the cake that can help push your brand to the top, given you have a strong digital marketing foundation in place already.
How to Implement Google AMP
With so much potential upside to AMP-enhanced pages, we’re seeing major increases in adoption rates for this technology.
Only a few years ago, there were fewer than one million AMP pages on the web.
One source estimates the number of AMP pages to be well over 31 million at this point! That amount is only expected to increase as mobile browsing gains ground.
With that said, proper implementation of this technology is not easy.
As an article from CIO points out, there are a lot of behind-the-scenes tasks that require coordination between content, sales, and tech teams, and optimization is ongoing.
Although basic AMP frameworks can be installed fairly easily, you miss out on a lot of the data-rich SEO advantages by ignoring best practices.
While this should not discourage anyone from pursuing AMP, they should recognize that it does demand some technical know-how and coordination across departments.
Should You Do it Yourself?
If your brand has a team of dedicated mobile development experts, then by all means give them the green light for AMP optimization and enjoy the results.
But the truth is that very few brands, especially smaller ones, have the time or the resources in-house to make this happen.
For this reason, I suggest that up-and-coming companies outsource their AMP implementation to an agency or freelance teams that know the technology well.
The best agencies will not be exclusively IT-focused, but also leverage marketing expertise to get the most out of AMP.
They will analyze all of your brand’s digital assets and determine which ones will benefit most from AMP enhancement, then proceed to upgrade them accordingly.
This is not the kind of technology you can just plug-and-play and expect max results.
With the constant upgrades and tweaks to the mobile-first index, you want an experienced team heading up your AMP strategy, rather than always playing catch-up.
The Future of Google AMP
Keep in mind that AMP is still a relatively new technology, and still has not hit its full stride.
The top minds in the marketing space expect it to gain a ton of momentum very soon.
I recommend to all brands that they at least start planning to implement AMP, instead of waiting until they fall behind the pack.
If you put in the groundwork now and work with an agency that knows the ropes, your brand will be positioned for massive advantages in mobile experience in search in years to come.