AMP & SEO – HOW AMP AFFECTS YOUR RANKINGS

The single most important factor that determines the amount of traction that your website gets is your user experience. The modern user is impatient and hates pages that take ages to load. The last thing you would want is your page to be unresponsive. Pages that load slowly or have complex navigation have a high bounce rate. Users have better things to do than browsing a website for hours to get information they are looking for. To create value for users, pages must be designed to deliver a seamless user experience. To achieve this objective, more businesses are using Accelerated Mobile Pages to publish their websites.

AMP: An introduction

Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP is an open source framework developed by Google in partnership with Twitter. The idea behind the project was to help businesses create highly responsive, faster-loading pages. The technology works by simplifying the HTML. To avoid glitches, streamlined CSS rules are followed.

The two most important parameters of a website’s effectiveness are its site speed and dwell time.  AMP can help improve both these parameters. AMPs load faster than conventional webpages, giving users an extra reason to stay on the page. Content is delivered directly from search results at an amazingly fast speed, ensuring that users don’t get stuck.

Components of AMP  

AMP has three components

AMP HTML

AMP HTML consists of normal HTML. This HTML, however, includes specialized tags. Additionally, the framework has strict rules for the tags used. To improve site speed, the AMP framework does not allow users to utilize forms. Users are required to make use of a streamlined, more agile version of CSS. In the framework, some traditional HTML tags are traded with custom tags that interact better with other AMP components.

AMP Javascript Library

Oftentimes Javascript impacts the page loading speed. To address this problem, the AMP framework prohibits the use of author-written Javascript. Instead, custom AMP elements are used. These elements are specifically designed to not hinder the page rendering process. AMP provides a library of components that can be used to create animations and modify layouts.

AMP Content Delivery Network

AMP CDN, also known as AMP Cache is a critical component of AMP framework. AMP CDN is a proxy-based content delivery network. To help improve delivery speed, the CDN fetches AMP content and caches it. There is no option to opt out; however, you can keep on using your CDN provider stacked on top of the cache.

How AMP can help improve rankings

Does AMP influence SEO? Yes, however, it is important to remember that it is not a magic tool that will help improve your user experience overnight.

The single most important objective of any SEO strategy is to improve the website’s ranking. Though Google has stated multiple times that at present, Accelerated Mobile Pages are not a ranking factor; things are bound to change in the near future.

The number of people who use their smartphones to access the Internet is increasing with each passing day. If you thought this was a fad, let us tell you that mobile technology is here to stay. Google has already tweaked its algorithm to use mobile sites as the primary version to index. AMP helps you create mobile-friendly sites that can boost your website’s ranking.

Although AMP is not a ranking factor, it can indirectly help improve Search Engine Optimization rankings. Besides some of the obvious benefits stated in our  6 Key Advantages of Accelerated Mobile Pages article, here are some ways in which AMP can help SEO:

1. Lower bounce rates

As attention span decreases and users become more impatient, businesses are struggling to keep a tab on their bounce rates. The modern user does not think twice before abandoning a page that takes ages to load.

Studies show that around 70 percent of people switch to a different website because the original website had a slow loading time. If you think a few seconds of delay in page load time is no big deal, think again!Studies have revealed that just a one second delay in loading a page can decrease page views by 11 percent, customer satisfaction by 16 percent & conversion by 7 percent.CLICK TO TWEET

The loading time of AMP pages is 15-85 percent lower than that of traditional web pages. When your website provides information that users are looking for in a timely fashion, they are more likely to stick to your website for a longer time, which helps keep a tab on your bounce rate.

2. Better content visibility

AMP can help improve content readability, which is important to get your content noticed. Improved content visibility can help you earn more backlinks that transform into more users. To earn quality backlinks, use informative, interesting, and thought-provoking AMP content.

3. Improved clickthrough rate

An important factor that Google considers when ranking websites is the way users interact with them. Creating AMP-enabled pages won’t only help you get more traffic to your website, but can also increase the likelihood of more users checking out other pages – which can be just the boost your website needs.

4. Better content distribution

No matter how informative or entertaining your content is, if you are unable to provide information swiftly, there is a higher chance of users migrating to other websites. Because AMP-enabled pages load fast, they can help you distribute content to your target audience efficiently and swiftly. Additionally, when users are able to access content quickly, they are more likely to share it on different social media platforms.

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