We are discussing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) today.
We all wish our websites would load instantly. But making it happen is a tremendous technical challenge. The system requires servers to work together, elements to appear at the correct time, and images to be resized while still maintaining their quality.
Ideally, though, you want your pages to load fast. There are massive SEO implications. And, frankly, today’s users expect nothing less. If your site loads slowly, customers will click away, Google will lower your ranking, and you’ll miss out on potential sales.
So what does Google AMP have to do with all of this?
That’s why we developed AMP. Although businesses may find it difficult to make their websites load faster, Google has developed AMP in order to help with this issue- especially on mobile devices. Google wants all the pages its users click on to load as quickly as possible. If content creators do not produce quality content, it will negatively impact Google as a search engine.
In other words, AMP is Google’s way of making sure websites load quickly. AMP-enabled pages load three times faster and have conversion rates that are twice as high. This is a huge improvement for something that is, essentially, very easy to do.
What Is Google AMP?
Google AMP is a technology that does a lot. In other words, Google built a platform that lets webmasters create better pages, emails, stories, and ads.
Marketing that is customer-first is right. The whole purpose of the utility is to make users happy.
If a company wants to improve their key performance indicators and do better than their competitors, they will go to AMP. This technology allows pages to load very quickly on a variety of platforms, and also allows companies to save copies of their entire website if they use content management platforms.
AMP makes merging your outreach platforms so much easier. If you want to embed a tweet you made in a blog on your site, you can do so by clicking on the three dots next to the tweet and selecting “Embed Tweet.” With AMP, it’s a piece of cake. You can create content that can be consumed without leaving your site. This results in fewer lost sales due to customers getting sidetracked on social media and a better conversion rate.
How Google AMP Improves The User Experience
So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. Google AMP is faster and more efficient than HTML because it simplifies the code and eliminates unnecessary elements.
AMP Loads Page Features Simultaneously
It’s annoying to click on a page and have to wait a long time for the elements to adjust themselves into the correct order. As you explore one part of the page, new elements load below, causing the original element to flick out of view.
Google AMP is designed to eliminate annoying digital artifacts. Instead of loading text and images separately, browsers are required to load them together. The result for the user is nothing, and then everything. The user experience is not disrupted by random adjustments to the layout once the page loads.
AMP employs a technology called iFrames to achieve its goal. You can now use custom JavaScript elements that might affect how things happen at the same time.
Browsers Understand Page Layout Before Elements Load
Google AMP does another smart thing. This wireframe helps browsers organize where content will be placed on a page before it is fully loaded. When a user clicks on a page link, the download process starts and everything is set up correctly.
AMP Prioritizes What Loads First
Some web pages are very large and contain a lot of images. Users cannot see all of the items at one time, so it would not be effective to load them all at the same time. It would make more sense to use available resources to load the parts of the page that can be seen in the browser window and then gradually load page elements that users are most likely to need next.
Google AMP uses this approach. It focuses on visible on-screen content first, and only uses resources for ad content if it is below the fold. This means that users can see the most important content on a page while the rest of the content is still loading in the background. When I scroll down, it feels as if the entire page has loaded instantly, even though there are still large areas outside of the browser window that are empty.
Remember, this is only possible because of layouting technology. The browser is aware of the frame of the pages and only needs to fill in the appropriate elements. The app tracks the user’s position and inserts downloaded content into the appropriate fields as required.
AMP Reduces Layout Recalculations
Many web pages are made more complicated by the use of multiple sheets and scripts. Even though a traditional page may finish downloading, the browser may still rearrange everything because it is not aware of the order that things are supposed to appear in.
Again, AMP’s simultaneity advantage deals with this. This means that browsers don’t have to recalculate positions of elements on the page. AMP reads, understands, and makes changes to webpages before displaying them.
AMP Makes Downloading Fonts Faster
Non-AMP pages require HTTP requests to begin downloading fonts. The browser has to download the relevant scripts and stylesheets before it can continue.
But with AMP, that’s not the case. Fonts arrive with everything else because there is no communication blocking that would delay their arrival. This makes the process simpler and improves the experience of loading the page.
CSS Is Greatly Simplified
Browsers need to make multiple HTTP requests to render nont-AMP pages, but AMP significantly simplifies the process. The only thing slowing down the page’s loading speed is the in-line stylesheet.
AMP caps the size of the CSS file at 50 kilobytes. Backend bloat can sometimes prevent website layouts from being detailed. This restriction prevents that by making it large enough to allow for detailed content layout.
AMP Shifts Image Loading Tasks To The GPU
When an image is being loaded onto a computer, it can cause the processor to work harder than usual. This component is better for sequential tasks because of its CPU architecture. However, visual content can be more easily processed in parallel with GPUs.
AMP splits the workload between the pages between these two computer components. The CPU is good at making pages run faster. The GPU is best suited for tasks like cropping, shrinking, or rotating images. The two components communicate with each other when they need additional resources, or there is a more efficient way of performing a task.
How does Google AMP work?
There are three parts to Google AMP:
- AMP HTML
- AMP JS
- AMP Cache
AMP HTML has a defined set of pre-processing tags that must be followed. The main types of tags are those for text formatting and for embedding images, including amp-ad, amp-embed, amp-img, amp-pixel, and amp-video.
AMP JS is a severely limited Javascript file. It loads all external resources asynchronously. This prevents “render blocking” from slowing down the rendering of the page the user came to see. The article’s actual words and images load first, with everything else loading afterwards. AMP JS predicts which DNS resources and connections will be needed, then downloads and pre-sizes images. This is done to make it easier for the mobile device to use less data.
AMP Cache is a set of servers used by Google to store content so that it can be accessed quickly from anywhere in the world. Instead of sending the same page from California to Italy each time it is requested, this ensures that the page is saved in Italy. Instead of loading the AMP page from Italy, Google loads a copy of the page that has been optimized for speed. This copy is stored on a server that is located close to Italy. The CDN is updated each time an article is updated or added.
The positive impacts of AMP on SEO & online marketing
Faster-loading articles improve the publisher/reader relationship. The biggest advantage that publishers get from using AMP for improved SEO is speed. In other words, a faster website means more people will see your content, ads, and engage with them.
1.) AMP-enabled articles will rank higher in SERPs.
If Google chooses to display AMP content at the top of its search results, this content will have an advantage over non-AMP content. An example of how an AMP page would appear in a search engine is shown below.
Currently, AMP articles appear in a swipeable carousel. become available in the future There is no paid placement option available at the moment, but it is possible that it will become available in the future.
2.) Paid search impressions will likely increase.
After users view an AMP-based piece of content, the most common thing they do is click back to the search engine results page to explore other options. This will increase the number of paid search impressions over time.
3.) Google AMP is for every publisher.
Only a select set of publishers are allowed to participate in Facebook’s Instant Articles feature. Google AMP provides a way for anyone to format their content to be accessed quickly by a potentially enormous number of readers.
4.) AMP is open source.
Contributions to Android’s evolution are not limited to Google’s best and brightest developers. If you have an idea of how to improve the specification, you are welcome to contribute. AMP is constantly changing to better adapt to the publishing world.
5.) Analytics are coming for AMP.
Google says that several analytics providers are preparing their services to tell publishers how well their AMP content is doing. These providers include comScore, Adobe Analytics, Parse.ly, and Chartbeat. The AMP specification includes instructions on how to support both current AMP analytics vendors and custom analytics solutions.
6.) Content gets to more readers.
Although AMP is mainly beneficial to Google because it helps them compete with Facebook’s Instant Articles, the increased reach also benefits publishers because their content can now be more widely read when users click on them in Google’s search results, rather than just in Facebook’s walled garden.
7.) More features and formatting options are coming.
Even though AMP pages can only be formatted using a limited set of tags, there is still hope. Although there are still some extended components that have not yet been released, there are also some experimental components that are available.
The negative impacts of AMP on SEO & online marketing
1.) There are no forms in AMP content.
AMP may not improve page speed for sites that are not focused on publishing content.
The number of paid search advertising impressions could decrease.
4.) There are no external style sheets or Javascript.
5.) Domain Authority may suffer.
Publishers will need to change the way they serve ads inline with content.
7.) Budgeting for content development will need to increase.
AMP pages must be well-constructed in order for publishers to be successful.
Page speed is a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. This shows that Google wants page speed to be a more important factor in how it ranks pages in search results.
If a site focuses mainly on long articles and news, rather than marketing or selling its products, it would benefit from using AMP. If publishers only add AMP to get ahead of the mobile-optimized content trend, it will improve their SEO ranking.
If you are wondering how to improve your page speed, there are a few things you can do. We have a great free performance report that you can use to get specific information about how to optimize your site for speed and performance. If you want to learn how to improve your website’s performance, this is a good resource.
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