AMP and SEO: What are the relations?
Within the digital marketing industry, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are known to be one of the ways to boost a website’s SEO performance. But, what is the relationship between AMP and SEO? Do AMP versions of website pages help the ranking factors? If you’re keen to learn more about AMP and SEO, in this article, we dive deep into how they both correlate with each other:
What is AMP?
AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, which is an open-source HTML framework that was developed by Google to increase the loading speed of websites and make them mobile-optimized. AMP removes several HTML elements on the website pages to ensure a smooth and seamless experience for users.
What is the relationship between AMP and SEO?
But, what do AMP and SEO have to do with each other? Well, AMP pages are useful for SEO as they can help to boost a website’s SEO performance. Although it’s not a direct ranking factor for SEO, AMP pages can influence certain ranking factors and boost the rankings of a website as a whole.
Benefits of AMP and SEO
We explore the common advantages of AMP and how it helps with SEO below:
1. Faster loading speed
AMP pages are made to reduce loading times and boost overall website speed. We all know how search engines such as Google or Bing favor websites that have lightning speed, which is one of the SEO factors. With faster loading speeds, it will improve the user’s experience and keep them engaged on the website, reducing bounce rates.
2. Higher positions in search results
The AMP versions of website pages don’t directly affect SEO, but they help to boost SEO due to the fact that search engines like Google prioritize websites with fast loading speeds or mobile-optimized versions. This is because most people who use search engines are usually using mobile devices.
3. Increase of click-through-rates
AMP pages could appear in special search engine features such as ‘Top Stories’ on Google, which is located at the top of the search engine page. This increases visibility and encourages more users to click on your website.
With higher click-through rates, search engines will take this as a signal that your website has many visitors and rank your website higher too.
Drawbacks of AMP and SEO
Just like every other feature, AMP does have several drawbacks in relation to SEO. Here are some of the cons:
1. Requires extra technical work
Although there’s no direct relation between AMP and SEO when it comes to coding, it’s considered a con as it requires more work. Instead of just coding one version of a website page, website developers are required to create AMP versions of the pages as well.
Website owners or developers have to keep an eye on and maintain two different versions of the pages, which are the AMP versions and non-AMP versions. This could potentially add more burden for SEO as one of the best practices is to ensure the technical SEO of each website page is taken care of.
2. Limited content and design elements
AMP pages are usually condensed versions of normal websites. The reason why it loads fast is because most of the content or design elements are removed.
It may not look as attractive as the non-AMP pages, so it could increase the bounce rate of users as they might want to leave the website quickly. A high bounce rate is considered bad for SEO as it signals to search engines such as Google that it’s not a well-visited website.
3. Crawling issues
One of the downsides of AMP and SEO is that search engines have to crawl AMP pages on top of the non-AMP pages. This shouldn’t be a problem for small websites with not much content, but for large websites, it may become an issue.
For instance, Google crawl bots may not be able to index all of the pages automatically, which is bad for SEO as it’s important for all pages to be indexed to appear in search results.
What is the impact of AMP on SEO?
Now the real question is – what kind of impact will AMP have on SEO? Here are some of the expected impacts:
- May cause link-building issues: Since AMP pages are rooted within the Google.com URL, it may not give you much link juice as it comes from Google’s domain.
- Could appear higher on search engines: Since AMP websites generally are favored by search engines, your website could appear at the top ranking positions.
- Able to use AMP-only features on Google: If your website uses AMP, it might appear on the Carousel feature or ‘Top Stories’ on Google as these features are reserved for AMP pages.
- Increase click-through rate: Since AMP pages will provide a smooth and seamless experience for users, they will be more engaged with your website, reducing the bounce rate.
How to implement AMP and SEO on website pages
To ensure the AMP pages work together with SEO, here are some recommendations:
- Ensure the AMP pages are SEO-optimized: Don’t forget to perform the SEO best practices such as SEO-friendly URLs.
- Choose which pages to create AMP versions: As not all websites or pages require AMP versions, you may consider the ones that will benefit the most from AMP.
- Ensure your AMP pages have canonicalization: This is to avoid duplicate content and signals search engines like Google to index them separately.
How to track and measure the performance of AMP and SEO
To ensure whether AMP versions of your website pages are working well with SEO, you could consider using tools such as Google Search Console or Google Analytics which shows both AMP and non-AMP versions. Some of the key metrics to look out for would be bounce rates, conversion rates, impressions, clicks, and click-through rates.
Conclusion
To conclude, AMP and SEO are considered to be closely related to each other with the main purpose of providing the best experience for users. Though AMP isn’t considered a ranking factor for SEO, it does influence several ranking factors, which affect the search engine positions as a whole. If you need further help with optimizing your website for mobile, you can take a look at our article here.