What Does Google AMP Mean?

What is Google AMP? It refers to Google Accelerated Mobile Pages. What does Google AMP mean? Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) helps pages rank higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Plus, it’s supposed to provide faster load times and is backed by Google. It’s a win-win, right?

What Does Google AMP Mean for Your Business?

Google provides many tools for companies like a Google My Business listing. Google AMP is a free tool meant to improve loading speeds and rank of websites utilizing it. What does Google AMP mean for your business and other organizations looking to optimize their websites with AMP? Keep reading for a description of the pros and cons below.

PROS

Improved Mobile Experience

Google AMP is useful because it helps you optimize your website with the user experience in mind. In other words, it makes your site mobile-friendly with faster load times since users are beginning to gravitate to using tablets and mobile devices more frequently.

Higher Ranking in SERPs

Google finally released its mobile-first indexing features in March 2018. These features will use the mobile version of a website for indexing and ranking purposes. Better load times and mobile-friendliness will improve your sites ranking.

Carousel Placement

By using Google AMPs, your pages are featured in a carousel above the fold that allows users to scroll without needing to scroll down. These results are placed above all of the search results.

Better Page Load Speeds

The biggest reason Google developed Google AMP was to improve website page load speeds. AMPs remove the elements impacting the loading time of your website pages. These elements could be any type of heavy styling or multiple lines of JavaScript. Google AMP makes your website faster by taking out the bloated elements that are slowing it down.

CONS

Analytics Tracking Issues

If you’re already taking advantage of Google Analytics then you understand the importance of tracking and analyzing your organic traffic data. While Google AMP can work in conjunction with Google Analytics, it can be difficult to implement. The difficulty fluctuates depending on the various obstacles encountered on each website.

Internal Linking Problems

Google delivers a cached version by storing a copy of your page separately. As a result of the cache loading your website pages instead of the site server can cause the site to lose internal linking. If the AMP page loads from Google’s cache, the shared link won’t attribute to your original page link.

Difficult Implementation

It’s not easy to implement because most website developers depend on the use of JavaScript and CSS files to streamline the creation of a custom-designed website. With AMPs, they’re forced to hand-code every page, which is in stark contrast to the way websites are created today. Most developers use third-party resources to streamline the process of website creation, which doesn’t require manual coding.

Best Marketing Practices

Even with the advantages Google AMP brings to the table, it can’t replace a quality website crafted by a professional web design firm. Whether you opt to use Google AMP or not, it’s your responsibility to properly implement the latest online marketing trends for 2018 to deliver useful, mobile-friendly content to keep readers on your website as long as possible.

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About 4 Step Studio

4 Step Studio is an online marketing agency that specializes in website design and redesign, SEO, social media and more. Our team of experts focuses on helping small business get found online, while educating them on what will make them successful in the digital world. To learn more about what we can do for you, visit our website at www.4StepStudio.com