Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are here to stay!

AMP — stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, introduced by Google in 2015 and is an open source custom web development framework that makes any content super easy to be loaded and viewed on a mobile device.

Here is the trick! Don’t confuse mobile optimized pages with the AMPs. AMPs are not just specifically designed for mobile but boost the page speed and page performance also.

Why it is the time to shift to AMP if you haven’t already?

• UX is all that you care about: It is a nightmare seeing your users bouncing back from your website because the page takes time to load. AMP pages load in less than 0.8 seconds (while non AMPs takes more than 20 seconds to load).
• More Engagement: With lesser load time, AMP gives more opportunity to engage with your users.
• Google Carousel: If you have an AMP article, there are chances that you can be featured on Google’s carousel.
• You always stay ahead of your competitors: If you adopt AMP before your competitors, you can definitely add this to your advantage and bring positive light.

AMP optimizations

Lazy Loading & Render Blocking: To make your mobile website work fast, it is important to make sure that all the resources are lazy loaded when it becomes likely that they’ll be seen by the user or when the document is otherwise idle. The page doesn’t have to wait even if there are extensions coming.

Async Javascript: AMP is successful only when the JS files are loaded asynchronously. With this, it will never wait for the big files to load.

Inline CSS: Only inline style sheets are allowed in AMP. Bloated CSS files don’t delay the loading.

Resource Prioritization: AMP downloads files/resources that are important for the users are downloaded first.

Third-party JS: In particular if third party JS uses the super-bad-for-performance “document.write” API, it does not block rendering the main page.

No HTTP request for font downloads: Because all JS in AMP has the async attribute and only inline style sheets are allowed, no HTTP requests block the browser from downloading fonts.

Impact of AMP on SEO & rankings

Pages that are AMP optimized rank better and faster and most certainly have better conversions. Not only this, AMPs improve your page speed drastically.

Since the page loads much faster on mobile, the user is able to view more pages on mobile and hence reducing the bounce rate. And with better time spent on the page and reduced bounce rate, Google will reward your page. It will be no surprise if the AMP pages rank better than the non-AMP one.

What if the page you are publishing has amazing content but takes some much time to load? Studies say that 1 second delay in page speed can lower your conversion percent by approx 3% and increase the bounce rate to nearly 8%. AMP helps you achieve crazy speed and give great user experience.

If the pages load insanely fast it is obvious that users will read more content, it will reduce the bounce rate and will automatically lead to better ranking.

Conclusion:

It’s a good idea to test anything that potentially enhances a searcher’s experience and engagement with your brand.

Let me know what you think about AMP! Share your stories, successes or failures, and how usage and development of AMP can be further improved :D