What Are Accelerated Mobile Pages and How Can They Help with SEO?
Much has been said about how online searching has shortened people’s attention spans. Enter mobile phones, which not only revolutionized the way we access the Internet, but also further reduced attention spans. According to Google, 40 percent of users lose patience with any website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Usually Internet connections are slower on mobile phones than other digital devices.
Because Google is a search engine that takes great pride in speed, it’s not surprising to learn they were quick on the uptake and introduced the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project. Now, when people in certain countries search for something on Google on their mobile phones, the search results highlight the pages that are AMP-enabled. AMP loads 4 times faster and uses 8 times less data than traditional pages optimized for mobile phones and tabs. In addition, the traffic on AMP can be measured and analyzed.
You may have seen the AMPs, which appear with tiny blue lightning symbols next to search results on Google. When you click on the results with those symbols, you will open a streamlined version of the page that will load almost instantly on your mobile device. An AMP is basically an HTML version of the page. It strips away elements such as JavaScript and third-party scripts that cause web pages to load slowly on mobile devices, which can make the AMP load up to 85 percent faster.
This is bad news for pages that are not optimized for mobile searches and can take up to 8 seconds to load on a mobile device. With a loading time of about a half second, AMP is also a step ahead of pages that are optimized for mobile devices and take 3 seconds to load. When you see an AMP version of a page, it is literally the bare bones of the page and is low on design and graphics, which is what makes it faster.Saving 2.5 minutes may not seem like much when you are rushing for an office meeting, but it makes all the difference when it comes to engagement on a mobile device.
AMP is set to have a significant impact on SEO and mobile app marketing, even though Google has said it is not a ranking factor. However, it won’t be long before a search engine that proudly announces “about 5,650,000,000 results (0.51 seconds),” rewards web pages that load quickly.
Let’s take a look at how AMP is likely to affect SEO.
AMP Has Appeared on the Carousel
When you search in certain categories in certain countries, it triggers a carousel result. These are the results that appear on the horizontal “merry-go-round.” The carousel appears at the top of the search engine results page and AMP-enabled websites or web pages that have been appearing high on the carousel push down all other organic search results, which makes AMP an ideal choice for SEO. If you want your website to be seen high up on the SERPs on a carousel, you will need to be an AMP.
Bounce Rates Are Reduced
Google monitors the time users spend on different sites, which helps rank each site. If too many people come to a website and push the back button because of boring content, slow loading pages, or irrelevant content, it can sound the death knell for the website in terms of ranking. A faster loading AMP is likely to hold a user’s attention and keep him or her from pressing the back button too soon. Accelerated Mobile Pages promise to load so quickly that they will decrease the bounce rate and keep readers engaged, all of which is good for San Diego SEO.
Google Is Penalizing Sites That Are Not Mobile-Enabled
Websites have to be mobile-friendly to be seen. Mobile search has grown exponentially, and with this quantum leap in the number of people using their phones to access the Internet, Google has also been penalizing sites that are not mobile-friendly. Google says it is constantly seeking to improve a user’s experience, and AMP is a step toward making this a reality. In this day and age, if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, Google can even stop ranking you altogether.
AMP Can Help Your Website Make Money
Ads placed on a website increase its load time. Ironically, while the ads are loading, the people meant to read the content tend to leave because the page takes too long to load. At the same time, websites need ads so they can continue to provide free content. In an indirect way, AMP enables advertisers to generate more money. It allows pages to load very quickly and makes better sense for advertisers because their ads no longer sabotage the speed of the page. The bad news for advertisers is that AMP HTML removes a lot of the infrastructure ads use, which will require a new approach to advertising. With AMP, you may even be able to say goodbye to ad blockers.
Faster Pages Lead to Better Conversion
SOASTA, a privately held American technology company, conducted research that shows websites that load fast have a better conversion rate than those that are slow. The same study found that when the load time is faster by just one second, the website has a better conversion record than a slower site. Anything that is good for conversion is good for SEO.
AMP works when you create two versions of your website: the original website and the other hosted on the AMP network. AMP may have significant implications for the mobile web and for San Diego SEO Internet marketing, but it remains to be seen whether publishers widely adopt the project.