This post explores the fundamentals of the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project – why it matters, why you should care and what you can do to prepare your business.
What is the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project?
Google knows that mobile search traffic will far outweigh desktop search in the not-to-distant future. It knows that mobile users get frustrated with slow-loading pages using their limited bandwidth. The Accelerated Mobile Pages Project is “an open source initiative which aims to dramatically improve the performance of the mobile web.”
We know that Google has been focusing heavily on mobile readiness and mobile page load times, even including provision for it in the Google ranking algorithm. Google says, “We know that on the web speed is critical and research shows that 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load“.
[clickToTweet tweet=”40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.” quote=”40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.”]
The Accelerated Mobile Pages Project aims to address this with thinner, smaller pages with less clutter which your site will serve to mobile users to improve their experience on your site, improving web visits and visitor retention.
There’s some developer speak in this video on AMP, but Paul Bakaus does a great job of explaining:
Google and the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project
We created a quick Playlist for you featuring each of the Google News Lab Google Hangouts on AMP.
AMP Episode One – Instant. Everywhere. That’s the goal of the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project: an open source initiative that embodies the vision that publishers can create mobile optimized content once, and have it load instantly everywhere. Questions and answers about AMP.
AMP Episode Two – Why AMP, What is AMP, How Does it Work?
AMP Episode Three – The Anatomy of AMP, Technical Overview
AMP Episode Four – AMP Analytics
AMP Episode Five – Paywalls and Subscriptions
AMP Episode Six – AMP Ads
AMP Episode Seven – Format Innovation
Learn to Write AMP Pages Quickly
Resource: amphtml.wordpress.com/2016/01/15/learn-to-write-amp-pages-quickly
“While we were writing about AMP, we realized one of the best ways to test our knowledge and assumptions of how AMP works was to implement the AMP site in AMP. The beauty of the underlying code is that it generates AMP HTML content for this updated website using web development best practices.”
Accelerated Mobile Pages and Google Analytics
Google has launched an Analytics component that will enable measurement on AMP pages. For publishers looking to use AMP to provide an improved user experience, Google released Analytics measurement capabilities for Accelerated Mobile Pages. AMP support in Google Analytics makes it easy to identify your best content and optimise the user experience on your site.
“Analytics on AMP is handled by an open source, reusable component that the Google Analytics team helped build. The <amp-analytics> component can be configured with Google Analytics specific configuration parameters to record page views, events, and even custom dimensions.”
Accelerated Mobile Pages Project and Search Console
Google added a preview of the AMP error report in Search Console (Webmaster Tools).
“You can find these reports under Search Appearance – Accelerated Mobile Pages. The goal here is to make it easier to spot issues in your AMP implementation across the whole website. In order to get started with AMP on Google Search, you’ll need to create matching, valid AMP pages where relevant, ensure that they use the NewsArticle schema.org markup, and link them appropriately.
The AMP error report gives an overview of the overall situation on your site, and then lets you drill down to specific error types and URLs. This process helps you quickly find the most common issues so that you can systematically address them in your site’s AMP implementation (potentially just requiring tweaks in the templates or plugin used for these pages).”
Accelerated Mobile Pages Project: Summary
It’s clear that mobile is critical to the evolution of the web. Businesses seeking to grow and keep up with user demands and competition should have Accelerated Mobile Pages on their radar and begin preparations to better serve customers and steal the march on competitors, not forgetting the opportunity to increase visitors and conversion rates, of course.Speak with a SpecialistGet a Free SEO Audit
