What is AMP in SEO?
These days, if a website takes longer than a few seconds to load, most users will immediately leave the website. This increases the bounce rate, which isn’t good in the eyes of search engines.
But with that being said, the common question within this topic would be “What does AMP stand for in SEO?” If you’re curious to learn more, keep reading this article to find out as you’ll get a detailed explanation about AMP pages and its benefits for SEO.
What is AMP?
Accelerated mobile pages, also known as AMP, is an open-source HTML framework that the AMP Open Source Project developed. However, Google was the first to create this project to compete against Facebook’s Instant Articles feature and Apple News.
Google decided to create AMP versions of websites to reduce loading times for content, such as images, videos, or ads, and deliver them almost instantaneously on mobile devices.
How does AMP work?
In order to decrease the loading time of website pages, AMP pages typically limit the use of some front-end development elements such as Javascript, HTML, and CSS. AMP pages generally contain the following: HTML, Javascript, and Cache.
AMP HTML
AMP HTML involves HTML that has certain limitations to boost a website’s performance and reduce loading times. This includes removing certain HTML elements which may be huge factors in slowing the website loading speed and replacing them with AMP HTML elements.
For example, one of the tags needed to be included at the top of the HTML page would be <html amp> or <html ⚡>. This is to show that the website uses AMP.
Another example would be the AMP boilerplate code which should be added in the head tag: head > style[amp-boilerplate] and noscript > style[amp-boilerplate].
If you wish to know further about AMP HTML, you may refer to the official AMP HTML documentation.
AMP Javascript
Javascript is known to be heavy and increase a website’s loading time. AMP Javascript helps to allow a website page to run without using Javascript code or any third-party Javascript libraries. Thus, increasing the website’s speed and improving overall performance.
For further information about AMP Javascript, you may refer to the official documentation of AMP Javascript Library.
AMP Cache
AMP Cache is known as a content delivery network that pre-loads a website page before a user sends a request to the server. This helps to boost the website’s loading speed. There are several different AMP Cache providers such as Google, Bing, and Cloudflare.
The AMP Cache providers will be able to detect the AMP pages due to the HTML tag <html amp> or <html ⚡> and cache the website instantly. You can also access the cached AMP pages through the URL by adding /amp at the end of the website URL. However, this only applies to website pages which have AMP implemented.
What kind of websites should use AMP?
Initially, AMP was solely used by news publishers. However, nowadays, most websites benefit from using AMP as most users view websites on mobile devices. Ideally, it would be best for e-commerce or news websites and content publishers to implement AMP on the entire website. Nevertheless, any website that wishes to boost mobile traffic, as well as overall website speed and performance, would make the most of AMP pages.
What does AMP stand for in SEO?
We know how important AMP is for websites to load faster and quicker, but what does AMP stand for in SEO? Well, although AMP isn’t considered a ranking factor in SEO, it does help to boost your overall SEO performance of a website.
Why, you ask? Recently, most search engines such as Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites and tend to rank these websites higher on the search results. The main reason why search engines do this is because most users are using mobile devices to browse websites. If your website provides an excellent mobile experience for users, your website will rank higher, thus increasing your overall SEO performance as well.
Benefits of AMP for SEO
If you’re wondering whether you should include AMP for your website and to help with your SEO, here are several reasons as to why it’s worth the investment:
- Improve the overall speed of the entire website: Since AMP pages generally load quickly and instantly, it will improve the SEO rankings as users tend to stay longer on pages that don’t take long to load.
- Boost the user’s mobile experience: Most users these days view websites through mobile devices. AMP pages encourage users to spend more time engaging with the website if the website is smooth and fast, which is great for SEO.
- Reduce bounce rates: Users these days won’t be patient enough to wait for websites to load. AMP pages load rather quickly, so users are prevented from exiting the website too quickly, signalling to Google that it’s a well-liked website and improving the overall rankings.
- Improve Click-Through-Rates (CTR): One of the features of AMP pages is that they’ll be featured on ‘Top Stories’ and other rich results features, which are found at the top of the search results of Google.
Disadvantages of AMP for SEO
However, there are several downsides of AMP for SEO as well. Here are some of the common ones:
- May require extra technical care: Since there are two versions of website pages – AMP and non-AMP, developers need to pay extra attention to both versions to ensure no duplicated content and so on.
- Contains certain limitations: AMP prioritizes speed and optimal performance, so certain HTML elements and content will be removed, causing restrictions to a website.
- Extra optimization may be needed without AMP Cache: If the website pages don’t have any AMP Cache, these website pages may require further optimization for better speed.
- Can be difficult to implement: If your website doesn’t run on content management systems, AMP pages have to be coded from scratch instead of using a plugin. Thus, requiring more work to be done.
Ways to implement AMP for SEO
Using AMP for your website pages to boost SEO isn’t that complicated. There are several ways to implement AMP such as:
- Install AMP plugins: This only applies if your website runs on a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress or Wix. There are various AMP plugins available such as AMP for WP.
- Use an AMP HTML page template: If you’re coding an AMP page from scratch, you’ll have to use AMP HTML elements in your HTML website page.
- Validate your AMP pages: Before displaying your AMP page to users, you need to validate and preview your AMP pages first. You can do this through Chrome DevTools or AMP Test Tool.
Conclusion
All in all, after understanding what AMP stands for in SEO and its benefits, you’ll be able to improve the mobile experience of users by boosting the website’s overall performance and gaining more organic traffic. If you wish to learn more about optimizing your website for mobile devices, you can check out our article here.