Google AMP: the mobile format to prioritize

Appearing in 2015, Accelerated Mobile Pages technology quickly established itself as a web standard and is now hard to ignore. The undeniable success of this AMP format is explained in particular by the rise of mobile use, which is now the device from which most searches are made. Brands that prioritize their mobile format stay in Google’s good books, as the well-known Mobile First Index shows. But what is the real impact of the AMP format on a site’s SEO performance? That is what we will cover in this guide!

Source: StatCounter

Google AMP: what is it?

In 2016, 51.3% of global internet browsing happened on a mobile device, especially on smartphones. That new consumption habit settled in so quickly that it seemed to catch webmasters off guard: mobile search results were often slow to display, sites were not optimized for it, and that noticeably degraded the mobile search experience… As often happens, Google did not take long to react. That same year, in this context of mobile devices recently overtaking desktop, Google launched its AMP format (Accelerated Mobile Pages). Its goal? Improve the user experience by offering faster, smoother display of web pages on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets: that is AMP’s main advantage. And it is especially important to address when you know that a load time that is too long discourages half of users from continuing to browse…

A site that is slow to load is disappointing for the user and can generate drop-offs, back-button exits, and frustration. Google says 53% of users abandon a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

For many publishers, a website’s traffic is synonymous with business and growth (whether the sites are e-commerce or not). Display speed has logically become a major issue in organic search. A site that is too slow sees visitors leave before the page finishes loading. Its bounce rate rises and it can no longer show good indicators or enough traffic volume to interest advertisers and keep its ad revenue.

Google then made load time one of its main concerns for SEO. Logically, AMP opened the way to a whole series of actions and updates, including the Mobile First Index. It aims to improve display speed, user satisfaction, and better monetization of sites.

A solution that accelerates the mobile web

In short, Google AMP is a new website format built specifically for mobile devices: an encoding and design standard that is responsive (adaptable to every screen resolution), and lighter, thought exclusively to smooth the connection and optimize display time and the loading of pages and content on a mobile site.

AMP pages allow many of the features of classic website pages (personalization, layout…) but their watchword is clarity: priority is given to the content, and nothing comes to disturb the reading (pop-ups, animations…). Loading is almost instant, and this format is compatible with most platforms, including social ones, so sharing and linking stay easy.

But because it touches the deep design of a website and can affect its structure and internal content strategy, as well as its visibility in search results, AMP has shaken up the codes of organic search.

How does Google AMP work?

From a technical point of view

This open-source technology is based on 3 pillars, HTML, JavaScript, and the Google Cache, in order to guarantee maximum comfort of use and to optimize SEO.

The HTML code of an AMP page contains fewer lines, which makes it easier to execute and considerably reduces page weight so they load faster: ten times less time than loading a classic HTML page!

The JavaScript framework of an AMP page is also lighter: when it is kept, it is already written and runs easily without allowing customization. In most cases, however, it is left out of the encoding. Only the strict minimum of data to display on the tablet or smartphone is kept.

Once the page is built, it is integrated and stored in cache by Google, on its servers. Google is therefore the one that serves it in the SERPs (results pages), based on users’ queries on its engine.

In addition, CSS styles (which apply graphic styles to pages) are disabled on AMP pages. This format keeps only images, videos, audio, social sharing links, buttons, and any calls to action inside the web page.

Code reduced to the minimum and content caching are the two criteria that make instant display possible, all the more so because only the code that corresponds to the visible content is loaded.

Which are the main sites concerned?

At launch, AMP technology was very popular with media sites that have to answer real instantaneity issues. For good reason: their business is based on the fast distribution of information. These sites are also among the most visited, and the content they offer is mostly consumed while people are on the move, and therefore via devices such as mobile or tablet.

Historically, the second category of sites concerned by AMP is e-commerce sites. The rise of online purchases made through mobile explains why AMP was quickly extended to this type of site.

Today, every site can benefit from adding AMP technology. Even if it remains mainly limited to news sites and blogs, it is still interesting for all sites because it boosts SEO.

A few site examples

Research carried out by Google shows that there is a correlation between a page’s load speed and its revenue. Adding AMP technology could double consultation time. In addition, the e-commerce AMP pages studied show conversion rates 20% higher than non-AMP pages.

For e-commerce sites, the examples of Amazon or Walmart also demonstrate the link between sales and loading performance:

Source: Moz study

The advantages of Google AMP

Load speed

Reducing load time is the main advantage of integrating AMP on your website. Storing the AMP page in the Google cache is a key step because it lets the page load very quickly during a mobile search on the engine. Each time a SERP is displayed, the engine starts to preload in the background the AMP pages available in the results list. So if the user clicks one of them, it will display almost instantly.

Easy, fast access to information encourages the user to keep browsing the site. They are therefore more likely to take actions on the site (fill in a form, leave a review, buy…) and that behavior improves the conversion rate of the web page.

Page visibility

Google AMP pages enjoy better visibility in search results and are therefore more effective for SEO. In the SERPs, they are accompanied by a small lightning bolt and an easily recognizable AMP acronym. The goal of the logo is to be associated in the user’s mind with the experience of a fast, clear web page that is ideal for mobile consultation. Once the user is familiar with the acronym and the pictogram, you can anticipate a tendency to favor it in their click choices.

Press, information, and news sites have a real stake in speed and accessibility of content, whatever the strength of the user’s mobile connection. That is why the AMP format was rolled out for them first. Thanks to that history, AMP content is favored in the display of Google News results such as the News carousel, at the top of the SERPs.

Promoting pages associated with the “AMP” mark for SEO, promising better mobile display speed, is an equation that leads to a significant increase in click-through rate.

In addition, AMP encoding has no influence on the ranking of the website and its non-AMP pages in a classic search on a computer.

The “Top stories” carousel display also offers obvious extra visibility. This type of display is also particularly well suited to mobile use, with the ability to swipe right or left to move from one piece of content to another.

To hope to appear in the Google carousel, your AMP page or article must contain at least one image that will be used as the “featured image.”

At the time of writing, this carousel format covers about fifteen countries, but several more will be added soon.

Source: Web Rank Info

Google AMP, a format that is easy to use and share

When you take Google’s guidelines and the many advantages AMP technology promises into account, it is extremely tempting to put it in place on your site. But what about in practice?

Can you use AMP on every site?

The answer is yes. But some work has to be done first on every page that will be moved to AMP to make them compatible. That means accepting that you will drop a number of elements, such as JS and custom JS libraries, forms, inline CSS styles… In terms of design, choosing AMP means giving up richer presentations of product pages, for example.

Does your site live on advertising revenue? No panic! Ads from AdSense, Google’s DoubleClick, or AdTech, A9, and Ad Reactor remain compatible and continue to display with AMP. Be careful, though: that does not solve the problem of ad blockers.

Since its launch, AMP has come a long way. Some SEO people think that in a little while, its implementation could become mandatory. What about you?

How do you install AMP on your site?

For AMP installation, there are two situations:

• if you use a CMS such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, there are plugins there to make your life easier. A CMS (Content Management System) is a tool for creating and managing a website. WordPress, for example, one of the most widely used CMSs, quickly updated itself by offering Google AMP integration through an official AMP plugin. You only need to install this extension and then activate it, in a few clicks. It automatically creates an AMP-format version of classic articles and pages. To view them, you then only need to add the “/AMP” suffix to the address of each page. This application also includes a canonical URL in the AMP page so Google does not categorize one of the two pages as duplicate content. More generally, though, integrating AMP into CMSs requires creating a new version of the website, following the application’s specifications: that is the only way to integrate the recommendations and the “minimum versions” of pages that Google imposes for this format. In theory, you can replace every classic page with AMP pages.

• if your site is developed from scratch, you then have to do this work by hand on the pages that seem relevant to move to AMP.

The next step is to have the AMP pages checked for errors and to validate their code through the AMP Project Validator, which highlights any errors. If you use the Chrome browser, there is a plugin that will save you valuable time in the AMP rollout.

Is your page already live? You can simply copy/paste the URL into the tool available directly on the search engine:

Sharing AMP content on social networks

As we said, AMP content is easy to share on social networks: Twitter, Pinterest, and of course Facebook. But the latter has already included a similar feature since 2015: Facebook Instant Articles. It lets you host articles directly on Facebook, without redirecting users to news sites. Like AMP pages, Instant Articles load quickly and therefore offer a better mobile experience.

According to Facebook, these optimized articles generate a 20% increase in click-through rate, a 70% increase in visitors, and a 30% rise in shares.

This feature therefore works in the same way as Google AMP: the articles are stored on the social network’s servers and users can access the information directly without leaving Facebook mobile. Open competition between the two giants for control of web content?

Google AMP: an opportunity for ads and advertising

Fast loading of ads

Ads on mobile have always been among the causes of slower page loading. But AMP technology could not simply remove ads, at the risk of drawing the wrath of advertisers. So, in addition to lightening HTML files, AMP also proposes to reduce the loading of advertising and to display it at the same time as the content: that is AMP for ads, or AMP for Ads.

Paul Muret, Vice President of Display, Video & Analytics at Google in 2016, demonstrated the importance of optimizing ads on an AMP-format page: an AMP page with an AMP ad takes less than 1 second to load, versus 4 seconds for an AMP page with a classic ad.

And to keep the user journey smooth through to the end of the advertising process, AMP for Ads expects the landing pages of AMP ads to be in AMP format as well. Advertisers therefore have to plan an AMP version of their landing page, but Google can take over when AMP technology is not implemented on their site. In other words, Google is able to automatically create AMP mobile pages itself from non-AMP pages!

New features for ads

Despite the principle of excluding JavaScript from optimized pages, Google AMP includes certain code in order to display ads, advertising, and a few JavaScript elements. Like the content, these files are stored on Google’s servers to keep load speed high. They are introduced in the code with the amp-ad tag, which is somewhat similar to the iframe tag of a classic HTML page.

In the Google AdWords and Google AdSense campaign-management interfaces, publishers and advertisers are encouraged to adopt AMP technology for their SEO.

AdWords ads have allowed AMP-format landing pages since May 2017. Reducing load time helps lower abandonment, improve the page’s overall performance and its SEO, and thus lower the mobile acquisition costs of campaigns. In the same way, members of the AdSense program can publish responsive ads for AMP by simply using a dedicated code. A fairly simple implementation overall, aimed at encouraging every other platform to adopt the AMP format, and taking one more step toward Google’s total domination…

The influence of AMP technology on SEO

Beyond the question of whether you can integrate AMP on your site, the debate is more about this: is it relevant? What is the real added value? For news sites, the answer is clearly yes. But for the others?

A study by Moz highlights the traffic evolution of the Thrillist site and two other media sites after converting several pages to AMP format.

Ratio of pages converted to AMP format:

• Thrillist: 90%

• Media site 2: 95%

Source: Moz

It is obvious that AMP influences site ranking indirectly, in the sense that a reduction in load time has a positive impact on the quality of the user experience. In addition, AMP content is promoted over the rest, especially in the Google carousel.

Which structured data should you include in AMP pages?

Structured data is optional for AMP pages, as it is for classic pages, but it is strongly recommended for your SEO. If you want to see them appear in the famous carousel, though, it is indispensable!

As always, the format that counts is Schema.org, which still has to be adapted to your content type: article, news, blog post, or video. On the syntax side, JSON-LD is the most recommended. If you want to add a breadcrumb trail to your site, you will have to handle it when you add the structured data, because that type of format is not covered by JSON-LD.

AMP pages and Google News

Heavily consulted on mobile, the Google News section can open very strong traffic opportunities for your site. With a Mobile-First Index mindset and in line with how people consume breaking news, Google therefore favors AMP-format content on mobile.

Last year, the way Google News works went through a period of significant turbulence. That shift is explained in part by a possible convergence between the ranking criteria of the AMP ranking algorithm and the one that influences ranking on Google News.

More than favored, AMP formats are clearly predominant on Google News. Want to rank your content in the famous carousel?

Creating AMP pages and duplicate content: how do you handle it?

Starting from the idea that AMP pages offer the same content as the base pages, you can easily run into a fairly serious duplicate-content problem.

Rest assured: if your AMP pages are built correctly, duplicate content will have no negative impact on your SEO performance. This format was also designed specifically to avoid page duplication between desktop and mobile versions.

As on a classic site, you can use canonical tags that let you manage duplicated or very similar content.

AMP and crawl budget

Thanks to a lighter page format and ultra-fast loading, your site’s crawl budget will only be better off. Googlebots will be able to visit more often and index more pages, faster.

Source: Le Journal du Net

Be careful, though, because those comments should be qualified according to François Goube, a reference in the SEO field. If Googlebots favor your AMP pages, that implies that your standard pages will be crawled less. It is therefore better to see AMP as a way to acquire more organic traffic and visibility in the short term, but not as a reliable solution over time.

To avoid consuming crawl budget unnecessarily, a small trick is to disable the AMP version of pages whose content concerns breaking news, and which therefore have a very limited lifespan.

Other SEO professionals would rather be tempted to leave both versions of pages, AMP and non-AMP, available. Behind that strategy, the idea is that the site benefits from strong visibility through AMP pages, and that disabling them could generate errors that would be extremely harmful for SEO.

Both practices can be defended; it is now up to each person to form their own view based on their goals and their industry!

How do you know if Google has indexed your AMP pages?

Once again, the technique to use is similar to the one used for classic sites: everything is managed through Search Console.

As explained earlier, AMP pages first have to be validated before they can be indexed. If you have just requested indexing but nothing seems to be happening, do not worry: the process can take 1 to 2 weeks depending on the case.

A robots.txt file check will in any case let you detect any errors that are blocking the proper indexing of your AMP pages.

In the end, does it matter to opt for AMP?

The digital barometer announced in 2017 that 3 out of 4 people in France owned a smartphone, while the percentage of searches made on mobile keeps growing and 50% of worldwide internet traffic comes from a smartphone. Looking at those statistics, it is easier to understand why AMP technology is so important in 2020.

The main advantages of AMP technology are:

• improving the user experience,

• lowering bounce rate,

• increasing the crawl frequency of Googlebots,

• benefiting from better visibility on the SERP,

• attracting more clicks thanks to promotion in search results,

• easing internal servers with lighter pages.

Do not lose sight of the fact that between two pages that offer similar content, the AMP one will be favored over the other in the ranking.

In the end, moving gradually toward the AMP format seems to be a good choice to improve and lock in your position on the SERP. This transition does require substantial work, though, the challenge being to present AMP pages that are as similar as possible to the desktop or responsive version in order to offer a consistent browsing experience.