What is Google Amp?
Google has announced that starting on 2/24/2016 they will give preference in mobile search results to pages that are built with its new, speed-oriented tech known as ‘Accelerated Mobile Pages’, A.K.A AMP.
Google AMP works very similar to the way that Facebook’s Instant Article tech does. The way FB’s Instant Article works is that content from the publisher is embedded on Facebook’s server, so that when a user clicks on that article they can read it in its entirety without ever having to leave Facebook. So, with AMP, content that is optimized correctly will be embedded onto Google’s servers, so that users don’t have to leave Google to read the news they want.
The reason that Google has decided to create and implement this technology is for 2 simple reasons. 1) They want to discourage users from leaving Google for an app or website. So, ensuring that news articles or other types of pages load super fast is one way to make sure that users stay in Google for longer. 2) Since an AMP version of a page is basically a stripped down HTML5 version of that page with no essentially no Javascript, it loads really fast. Since Google loves websites/webpages that are fast, they will reward the page with better rankings in their search results.
How Can I Optimize My Website for Google AMP?
First, make sure that you have at least 2 versions of the page(s): One for users who visit your website and another version that is AMP optimized for users who find your article or page via Google Search.
To ensure that your page is ready for AMP you will need to make some big changes to the HTML of the page and understand a couple of things about Javascript AMP rules.
1) AMP HTML – If you are familiar with HTML then you should be able to handle optimizing the HTML of your page with AMP’s preferred custom tags and properties. It’s not anything that a someone who is experienced with the language can’t handle. But you do need to know the “must haves” to ensure that Google accepts it as AMP friendly. You can find out the required markup rules here.
2) AMP Javascript – Even though third party Javascript is forbidden with AMP, Google has what the call the ‘AMP Javascript Library’ that implements the AMP custom elements and resource loading.
If AMP seems like an overwhelming task for you to implement into your website then please give the search marketing experts at Motiliti Inc a call, or send us an email so that we can help your business succeed. Motiliti has been helping businesses succeed since 2008 with our digital marketing strategies and technical expertise.