This is the era of handheld devices (mobiles and tablets). A user consumes a lot of information online. Publisher will provide access to the information to a user through the web.
What about the loading time of the webpage in a mobile?
How do you feel when you click on the link to open a page and it takes longer to load? You feel irritated and bonce back to another page, right. There’s a solution for it. Go for AMP. yes, Optimize your webpage for AMP. This reduces the loading time inducing better user experience. In case, if the loading time is longer, you might lose a visitor or a subscriber and lose a chance to earn revenue through advertising. Moreover, when a website runs slowly it gets hard for a user to pay attention to the ads. In order to solve the problems of publishers around the world. Google has launched an algorithm back in 2015 and that is an open-source Accelerated Mobile Pages.
So, what is an accelerated mobile page?
Accelerated mobile pages are designed for the instant loading of a web page on a mobile phone or a tablet. Besides ads on the websites, Google haunts for the websites that are content-rich provided with high-quality images and videos, and animations. Irrespective of the type of the device, the aim of AMP is to provide the same quality content. AMP web pages work on the principle of AMP HTML.
Twitter, WordPress, Adobe Analytics, LinkedIn etc., are all integrated with the AMP HTML pages.
Have you ever observed a flash icon beside a web page on Google search results? The icon indicates that the page is AMP integrated.
Why do you need an AMP?
It enhances the user experience by loading web pages faster. Furthermore, it urges them to stay longer on the website. Keeping it simple, the faster a web page loads, the more engagement you get. AMP reduces the bounce rate and increases your mobile ranking. A simple loading time doesn’t get you the best results. In fact, engagement depends on two factors, fast load time( a webpage must load within 1.5 sec-2.9 sec) and high rated content.
In addition, AMP will bring you higher revenue and drive more traffic to your website.
Benefits of AMP
- Improved user experience
- Search engine posting
- Speedy page loading
- Improves mobile ranking
- Induces better site performance
Do you want your page to be an Accelerated mobile page?
Firstly, decide which part your website should be an AMP.
After you decide, here are the three steps to follow to build an AMP for your website.
1. Create a template
- You can either build an AMP from the scratch or you can convert an HTMPL page to AMP.
- To create an AMP template,
- Make sure that it meets AMP guideline
- When styling a page include <amp*> to bring an aesthetic appearance to your website which includes images and videos
- A web page must be simple
- Add navigation to each of the pages because AMP works on Google cache. This gives searchers a link to making them stay on your website
- Include amp ad component (<amp-ad>) to place an ad on your website
- Finally, validate the AMP page
2. Roll out the pages
Test one or two pages from your website on AMP first. Embed the high-ranking pages to see if Google is serving AMP in mobile search results. Google may take time to find and form indexes of your AMP page. Roll our your pages for at least a month to get the desired traffic.
Before sending your page for a review, Use an AMP validator to check if there are any problems with your page. This a step that you need to follow without any delay because it might take longer for the crawler to index your page and before the Google reaches your page make sure that everything is alright on your website.
3. Track analysis
Next, when you are done with building a page. It is important to track the performance. AMP analytics differ from Google analytics. You need to use a third party AMP analytics tool to track the results.
- Make use of canonical URL to check whether the traffic increases or decreases due to AMP
- Add extraUrlParams to canonical Url to differentiate AMP web pages from the normal pages. This gives complete information on the performance of the website with AMP
Most importantly, AMP has 3 restrictions which must be followed to fulfil the guidelines
Use HTML Tags
Follow and use pre-defined AMP tags. It is a subset of HTML that authorises the content that enhances better performance. As it is a subset HTML it has got some restrictions to use the full set of tags for proper functionality.
Unlike any other HTML document, Amp can also be uploaded to web pages which don’t need any special configuration. It for serves AMP proxy servers too.
- AMP replaces images references with viewer’s viewport images
- Inlined images that can be viewed above the fold
- Inlined CSS variables
- Previously loaded extended components
- Customized tags for enhanced user experience
Important change to remember is use <amp-img> tag instead of <img/>. This allows the images to automatically load when a user scrolls.
AMP format allows the content producers to design AMP files that can be easily cached, crawled and displayed.
AMP Javascript
Javascript is a robust tool that can be used to modify any page. To stop the page delaying AMP use asynchronous javascript. The use of customized hashtags is restricted. You can only use from CDN repository. Include AMP validators for efficient testing but it is not allowed to use your own add-ons.
Although, third part java script is allowed only in sandboxed iframes to load add-on’s to use javascript in the background. But, you will have to load a tracking code to prevent from page rendering.
CSS
CSS blocks are rendering. It makes a page bloated by preventing a page to load. It only supports about 50kb of the inline style sheet. These inline style must be included on the same page without referring an external file.
In fact, 5000 bytes of CSS is more than enough but what about the websites that include advertisements, videos and images? In such cases, you need more inline space. So, this the reason why CSS renders 50Kb inline space.
To insert CSS use an AMP element, <styleamp-custom>…</style>
Also, include boilerplate styles which are apt for any AMP page.
AMP Url’s
You can also use an AMP-only website. But, most of the users use AMP on a separate link. To include a Url for amp version by using an amphtml meta tag. Google identifies a webpage as an AMP only when a meta tag is added.
Conclusion
Do not make your users wait. Create a lucrative user experience by using AMP. This speeds up your webpage and presents a great experience for mobile users. The blend of AMP and high-quality content deliver enhanced customer experiences. After all, any business run based on a customer. So, ensure to make them happy and retain them for a longer time. Google always searches for the website that presents the effective user experiences and one is to use AMP.
