One of Google’s most recent additions to its successful products is AMP or the accelerated mobile pages. Launched last February 2016, an AMP is an open source initiative that allows sites to be beautiful, functional and profitable without compromising the user experience. It’s a lightweight version of HTML. Stripping it down allows sites to be so much faster than they once were. If you want to understand search engines, understanding AMP is the next step. Here’s what you need to know about Accelerated Mobile Pages.
Understanding the Accelerated Mobile Pages Feature on Google
Since this project is expected to revolutionize mobile web surfing, Google had a lot of excited partners, including DNI (European Digital News Initiative), WordPress, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. The goal, since it was announced to the public in 2015, was to improve mobile user experience. The idea is similar to Facebook Instant Article, only it’s available to more sites thanks to its open source format.
Because we now live in a mobile world, where people can’t wait to access information, speed is very important. Faster websites get more traffic because half of all users leave a site that doesn’t load after 3 seconds. Those which can’t keep up lose out on opportunities those users could have brought them.
Despite that fact, three-quarters of active sites take longer to load on mobile with a 3G connection than on a laptop. That means of businesses are losing users that they can convert because of how slow their page is on a mobile device. The biggest issues are slow loading pages, unresponsive functions, and ads that block the use of the page — further slowing it down.
Most people think that if the ads are removed, the site instantly so much faster. While that may be true, monetization is what’s keeping a lot of sites up. So, it’s important to strike a balance between performance and profit. That’s what AMP strives to do. It retains the quality user experience by speeding up the site, including loading all the graphics and making sure the functions work while retaining monetization.
This type of coding was designed for speed, which means it won’t be loading photos unless you scroll down to it. Incremental changes like this made all over the coding of a particular site can make so much difference.
When you use the AMP format, whatever type of site you have, your pages will load faster and it will avoid the usual user experience pitfalls — such having trouble scrolling or pressing the buttons. This format does not limit your ability to design the page to your liking, so you don’t need to compromise on the brand message or the vibe you wanted for the site.
Sources:
https://www.ampproject.org/
Steve Scott is the CEO & Director of Training at the New York SEO Training Academy. He has taught SEO skills to people from around the world and currently offers his hands-on search engine optimization training workshops in New York to individuals and businesses of all sizes. Corporate SEO training classes and consulting are also available.
