What is AMP? Benefits for mobile display and SEO

When it comes to speeding up your website on mobile and boosting SEO, the term AMP comes up again and again as a very effective solution. With Google AMP, you can increase visits, clicks and engagement from people on phones and tablets. So what is AMP and how does it work? Let's MONA Media find the answer in the article below.

What is AMP?

What is Google AMP?

AMP is short for the English phrase Accelerated Mobile Pages – a faster version of a web page built for mobile devices. Google AMP is an open-source technology that speeds up page loading on websites across different mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

Basic techniques behind Google AMP

• Lazy loading images: The page loads lighter content first, usually text, and delays images and videos until the visitor scrolls to them and pauses to look. By cutting out unnecessary data on the first load, the page loads faster.
• Asynchronous javascript loading (async): With this technique, the browser web design runs code and loads data separately. While one part of the page is still being processed, the rest keeps loading, so visitors don't wait long.
• CDN for fast JavaScript: CDN A CDN is a network of servers with “hubs” placed in many locations and countries. It delivers data from one source to many users faster and more simply.

How does AMP appear on Google Search?

When you search Google on a mobile device, pages that use Google AMP show a lightning bolt icon and the word AMP next to the link in the results. If you click that link, the content opens in one of the following ways:

• Google AMP Viewer: The default display, where Google serves and caches the content, giving visitors a better experience.
• Signed exchange: Display on the original URL link of the content. Normally you need extra setup if you want visitors to reach the page directly without the AMP viewer in between.

AMP in Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a tool that helps you monitor AMP status for your website. With Search Console you can see which AMP pages were set up successfully and which have errors. Checking is simple: open Search Console and click Mobile-optimized pages.

AMP Plugin

To use AMP on your website, you need to install an AMP plugin. The plugin helps display optimized pages HTML – pages that load faster because the HTML Code Tag Manager is stripped out. On pages with JavaScript, the script will not appear in AMP.

TWhen using the AMP plugin, keep these points in mind:

• Use the Streamlined version of CSS to support the AMP plugin.
• Only use the JavaScript libraries that AMP provides. Otherwise, errors Lazy Loading may occur.
• Validate properly so Google AMP runs without errors.
• AMP plugin pages cannot use forms.
• Adjust width and height so the frame and images keep the right ratio.
• Use the AMP Approved extension for the best support when playing video.

Google AMP has 3 components:

• AMP HTML: a subset of HTML, with tags and attributes you can customize, though the number and features are quite limited. If you already know basic HTML, this is fairly simple to work with.
• AMP JS: A JavaScript framework built for mobile pages. It handles resource handling and cannot be synchronous with loading.
• AMP CDN (Content Delivery Network): marks AMP pages for caching and optimizes them.

How AMP helps SEO

AMP is not among the ranking factors. Even so, Google monitors and indexes pages that use AMP to improve the user experience. A site with AMP loads faster on mobile, gives visitors a better experience, and is judged higher on quality and trustworthiness. As a result, its ranking improves indirectly.

When indexing, Google applies the same standard to every page and link. Whatever technology you use, the one standard it measures is page load speed. The faster a page loads, the higher Google ranks its mobile version. With mobile use as widespread as it is today, AMP brings real results to website SEO services.

You need to pay attention to Google's mobile-friendly criteria to use AMP for SEO properly and get the results you want. The ideal outcome is a site that has AMP and also meets the mobile-friendly standard, at which point the site gets priority in rankings, known as Google's mobile-first index.

Need to optimize your whole website but don't know where to start? Let the The website optimization service team at MONA Media handle it for you from A to Z.

With years of experience in website development and design, MONA understands which criteria matter for rankings and user experience and need your attention. Our team of highly skilled specialists has completed more than 8,698 projects successfully for more than 12,000 clients over over 10 years qua.

When you choose MONA's website optimization service, you get benefits such as:

• Technical optimization: Includes interface adjustments, page speed optimization, AMP optimization and more.
• SEO-standard optimization for your website: Optimizing site structure, overall SEO performance and building SEO-standard content for your website.
• Website design improvements: Designing logos, banners and product images that match your company's criteria.
• Integrating and setting up analytics and management tools: Setting up the essential tools for your website, such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Google Maps registration.

What are you waiting for? CONTACT US with MONA via Hotline 1900 636 648 to get detailed advice on the service and bring your website to its best quality.

How to check AMP correctly 

There are quite a few ways to check AMP. The most common ones are below.

Validity check

Checking AMP is simple. Just follow these steps:

• Go to the link: https://search.google.com/test/amp
• Paste the URL you want to check into the box.
• Click “Test URL” to start the check.

The system then reports the result right away. A message saying “Valid AMP” with a green color means the page is valid. If it is not valid, the system shows the errors so you can fix them.

Check page load speed

Some tools for checking page load speed:

• Google PageSpeed ​​Insights: A tool that tests page speed, evaluates loading on different devices and gives suggestions to improve load time.
• Think with Google: A tool that tests page load speed under different network conditions, including load times on 3G and 4G.
• Dotcom Monitor: A tool for checking and analyzing your whole website: load time, number of requests, load speed in popular browsers, and checks of hosting and the web server, among others.

-> See more:

• How to check page load speed quickly and accurately
• 10 most effective ways to speed up page loading

Pros and cons of AMP

Advantages of AMP on mobile

Advantages The biggest advantage of Google AMP is faster page loading on mobile devices. According to research, pages with AMP load faster 15 – 80% than pages without it. Faster loading means a lower bounce rate.

A better mobile experience also earns your site a higher evaluation and better rankings, which brings in more visitors. AMP also improves server performance, because it minimizes large data requests from mobile devices.

Limited

AMP SEO optimizes load time, which also limits how ads can be displayed. Setting up ads on AMP pages is also much more complicated than usual. So AMP pages are not a good fit for sites that want to grow revenue through advertising.

Another limitation of AMP is that it does not support Google Analytics. Without Google Analytics, collecting and analyzing data for the pages on your website takes a lot of time and effort. This becomes a serious problem if you need the data for online marketing.

That answers the question AMP, along with the pros, cons and ways to check Google AMP. We hope that with the information newly MONA shared above, you know how to use AMP to improve the user experience and increase traffic. Good luck!