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Will Google AMP Help or Hurt SEO Strategy?

  • July 21 2016
  • Comments Off on Will Google AMP Help or Hurt SEO Strategy?
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Google’s latest strategy believe it or not, is not a new algorithm as we have all gotten used to adjusting to lately, right after figuring out the old algorithm. Instead, it is something that will benefit most businesses, at least those businesses that want to be successful in the mobile world. AMP stands for accelerated mobile pages and as its name suggests, it helps pages load faster on mobile devices. This is a huge deal for most businesses as a majority of consumers use their mobile devices to conduct business or to preview a business they are about to visit before stepping foot in its doors. With faster loading pages, you have fewer frustrated consumers and possibly more real customers that stick around to read the content on your page.

 

How AMP Works

AMP is an open source project that allows webmasters to load pages that will be shown to viewers 4 times faster than the original pages. There is significantly less code allowed in AMP and the page must load from the Google servers. You also cannot use input elements, multiple style tags, or inline styles. The code must be very sparse and no Java or cookies are allowed. It is a bare bones program that will enable you to please your customers much more than the fancy programming ever would have been able to do, giving you more viewers in the end.

 

How Does It Affect SEO?

The big question everyone has is how AMP will affect their SEO. Initial studies show that AMP pages are signified by a carousel, giving viewers the choice to click on the mobile-enhanced websites. This is big news for businesses that want to rank higher for people on-the-go. Clicking on a page with the carousel provides instant access to the article; not only does it provide faster access, but it uses 8 times less data as well. With less than half of a second of loading time rather than the average 3 second loading time, AMP is significantly helping the SEO tactics of businesses around the world.

 

Not a Direct Impact

What you need to realize, however, is that AMP does not have a direct impact on SEO rankings, at least right now, but that will likely be coming. What it does have an effect on is the experience users have and the number of clicks pages receive. In the end, that all ties into SEO, giving you better results even without ranking higher because you used the AMP platform. Basically, if you do not use the AMP platform, you will likely perform worse than your competitors that have jumped on the AMP bandwagon.

 

Overall, AMP means more views simply because viewers will not have to wait 3 seconds or longer for a page to load. While 3 seconds does not seem like a long time, for a mobile viewer it is like eternity, forcing them to give up on a page before it ever loads. With AMP, those wait times are gone, which means longer viewing times and better SEO results. In general, if your page does not rank for mobile friendliness, its ranking falls dramatically and this will become even worse now with the new AMP rankings taking over the Google rankings. In addition to using the AMP platform, webmasters should be using an enticing, actionable headline; captivating image; and initial copy that will compel readers to continue on. With the inclusion of all of these strategies, AMP promises to deliver much better SEO results than any other tactic used thus far.

 

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Cameron Mackey

Cameron is the Content Manager for the Vorongo Blog. He has spent three years in various content marketing roles. When he is not working with Vorongo he enjoys photography and hiking.

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