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Who never gave up visiting a website because of the delay in loading? If this was already common when we accessed the internet only via a computer, with the popularization of smartphones, this impatience is increasing.
With users demanding more page agility, tech giants are always looking for solutions to improve the customer experience. One of the solutions was AMP, which stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages.
For those who are site administrators or content creators in an increasingly competitive environment, it is important to have a competitive edge. In addition to increasing visits, AMP helps your site gain positions in search engine rankings, especially Google.
In this post, we will better understand what AMP is, how the technology works on PC and what is the relationship between Accelerated Mobile Pages and Facebook Instant Articles. Afterwards, the article shows how to configure the system on a website, how the user can validate AMP-HTML, how to monitor this installation, among other important points.
Keep reading and learn more about AMP!
1. What is Google AMP anyway?
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), or Accelerated Pages for Mobile Devices in free translation, is an open source project created to help web content creators to optimize their sites for mobile devices, speeding up loading.
The goal was to make the page load instantly without losing multimedia content such as videos, animations and graphics, as well as smart ads. It was also important to ensure that the same code worked across multiple platforms and devices.
As of February 2016, Google began to integrate this technology into its search results, giving it prominence at the top of searches. Pages equipped with this technology have a circle with a radius and the acronym AMP next to the title.
2. What is the history of AMP and in what context was the technology developed?
AMP was developed by Google to be a direct competitor of Facebook Instant Articles (news editing resource through which collaborative content circulates on the social network) and Apple News (news aggregator developed by Apple for iOS operating systems) .
Optimized for mobile online browsing, AMP was announced by Google on October 7, 2015, after a long period of discussions with technology companies, news publishers and contributors to the Digital News Initiative, a group that encourages the development of products, training and innovation with an impact on journalism in the world.
From the announcement of the development of AMP to the present day, these were the facts that marked the performance of the project in relation to internet users:
- By the end of 2015, over 30 news publishers and technology companies (Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress, etc.) had joined the AMP Project development team;
- in September 2016, Microsoft built support for AMP into Bing apps for iOS and Android;
- in February 2017, Adobe took advantage of the project’s first year of launch to announce that AMP pages accounted for 7% of the online traffic of top news publishing sites in the United States;
- in May 2017, Google reported that around 1 million internet domains were publishing content related to AMP technology;
- in June 2017, Twitter linked to AMP Pages in iOS and Android apps;
- In September 2018, Microsoft released its own AMP page viewer and cache on Bing.
The last update on Google AMP goes back to September 18, 2018, when the company announced an open governance model for the project.
3. Why is it advantageous to use AMP?
At this point, you know what AMP is and when it was first developed by Google. But the question that remains is about the advantage of using this technology on different devices, right?
In fact, the main advantage of AMP is the loading speed of web pages. The reason is that, in general, the longer the site’s loading time, the more impatient users become and the higher the bounce rates in relation to the content served.
Without the application of AMP to HTML, the result could not be less impactful: the site tends to be neglected in Google’s results, losing online visibility and, possibly, ceasing to be an authority on the subject to which it relates.
4. Why does AMP work on PC?
Before answering the question, it is necessary to identify that the focus of AMP technology is mobile devices, although it is possible to access optimized pages also on PC.
The system is compatible with any system and works in the main browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Edge, in addition to optimizing the loading of pages on smartphones and computers.
5. How does AMP relate to Facebook Instant Articles?
Google’s AMP and Facebook’s Instant Articles are different projects, but they have some similarities. One of them is that both were developed to increase page loading speed. The second works only for retargeting via Facebook, while the first is an open source tool that focuses on reaching any web page.
6. What is the relationship between SEO and AMP?
Search Engine Optimization (Search Engine Optimization, in free translation) or simply SEO is the set of techniques used to improve the positioning of pages on Google and other search engines, generating, in this process that involves technology, quality content and authority in the online world, organic traffic for the companies involved.
On the other hand, AMP is a tool for optimizing mobile online navigation, contributing to the fast loading of internet pages and optimizing the user experience with quality content, which are prioritized by search engines through SEO practice.
Thus, AMP applied to HTML works to speed up the loading of web pages, contributing to content optimized by SEO techniques appearing first on Google and other search engines of relevance to the public.
7. How does AMP work?
This technology was created based on existing technologies on the web, that is, it uses HTML as a markup language. AMP-HTML is nothing more than HTML5 with a set of requirements and restrictions. Optimization is powered by JavaScript and styling is enhanced by CSS3. Additionally, pages are cached.
Basically, we can say that Google AMP works similarly to the CDN, being free and working on the “stale-while-revalidate” model, which guarantees that the content will always be updated in the cache. The process is simple: when the user enters the site, a request is made, and a cached version is sent to the browser. After that, there is a new request for the document from its original server, which will update it.
In this way, we can say that AMPs are totally separate from a typical mobile site, and a site can have three versions: for desktop, the responsive version and the AMP for smartphones. In the hierarchy, the desktop version is the main one, leaving responsive and AMP as alternatives.
8. How to configure AMP on your website?
You don’t need to be a programming expert to learn how to set up AMP on your website. The best CMSs offer plugins that make this setup easy. Among them, we can highlight the most popular: WordPress. See below how to do this process:
- access your site’s WordPress dashboard;
- then go to the plugins menu and click on “add new”;
- to configure and perform optimizations, such as analyzing Google Analytics data, inserting structured data and using Google Tag Manager, you will need to install the AMP for WP plugin;
- To configure Google Analytics, go to AMP in your WordPress dashboard and click on Analytics. Then enter your account tracking code;
- to check the appearance of accelerated pages, click on “Design” and then on “Launch Post Builder”;
- when the new screen opens, click on “AMP”, “Appearance” and select the information you want to keep on the accelerated pages and configure the colors to suit your brand identity;
- after the basic configuration, go back to the main WordPress panel, access the AMP menu and analyze each of the configuration items to edit according to the demand of your site;
- to view the final version of an AMP publication, just access the address and type AMP at the end of the URL — this check can even be done by the computer.
To configure using another CMS, enter the project’s official website and follow the specific step-by-step.
9. What is the difference between AMP and responsive pages?
Answering the question, responsive pages, also known as mobile-friendly, are a design strategy to present content in an organized and efficient way for the user, regardless of the device with which he accesses the internet.
On the other hand, AMP aims to improve the loading speed of the Web page, focusing on delivering qualified content as quickly as possible for those accessing the internet through mobile devices.
10. What is the importance of AMP-HTML?
The main function of AMP-HTML is to make everything external to the site asynchronous, that is, the system operates so that no element on the page blocks the rendering of another site.
Therefore, even though Google AMP Cache is optional, it is important to use this tool to cache all AMP-HTML pages on Google servers, automatically impacting machine performance.
11. How to validate AMP-HTML?
After setting up and building the AMP versions of your pages, you’ll need to do code validation. The project team itself provides a tool for this free of charge. The best way is accessing the AMP validator tools and inserting the link of a page by adding “/amp” at the end of the URL and clicking on “Validate”. If the Validation Status return is PASS, it means that your code is ok.
If the result is “FAIL”, it means that it has errors that will need to be corrected in order for it to be displayed correctly and indexed in search engines. The great advantage of the official tool is that, below the status, a list of errors found will appear.
12. How to track AMP indexing?
To follow the indexing of AMP pages on Google, specifically, on Google Search Console, follow this explanatory step-by-step:
- when viewing that the website page was crawled by Google, check the “AMP” item in the side menu of your account in Search Console;
- click on the “AMP” option to open the report on the pages of your site;
- look for the “Details” section, located below the impressions graph, to observe the errors, if they occurred during the process;
- after correcting possible failures in loading the Web pages, click on each of the errors listed by the platform;
- at the end, select the “Validate” option to confirm that the problems have been corrected by Google.
When the site is in the intermediate stage of correction, valid AMP pages are shown in green in the graph, while pages with errors are represented by red lines.
Keep in mind that the error checking process, which Google uses to validate that pages are working correctly, can take a few days. But this care is essential for you and the website developer to ensure the best online experience for the user.
In this content, you understood that AMP is a standard that is here to stay and, as it is an open source tool, the tendency is to grow in resources and possibilities. Therefore, anyone who is a site administrator or content producer must stay tuned with this technology, essential to deliver the best user experience and keep up with good SEO practices.
Did you like the post? Want to start using AMP on your site today? Get in touch with us and learn how to have the best structure to adhere to this innovation.
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