How Google’s AMP Pages Impact SEO

With just a few simple steps, you can get your web pages load four times faster than now. This discussion focuses on how Google’s AMP pages impact SEO.

Understanding Google’s AMP
The prime objective of the open source initiative launched by Google under the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project is to make it possible for the publishers to create mobile optimized content just once and get it loaded everywhere instantly. The implication is that when the user inputs a query, Google will display a carousal highlighting the stories on websites enabling AMP.

The useful impacts of AMP on SEO

The article loads instantly when the user clicks on a news search term link in the carousel. Published are highly enamored by this development.

Commenting on this, Pinterest’s product engineer, Jon Parise says, “In early tests, we found that AMP pages load four times faster and use eight times less data than traditional mobile-optimized pages. A better, faster mobile web is better for everyone, including users, platforms like Pinterest, and publishers.”

In an interview with Fortune, Jonathan Abrams, the founder of Nuzzel remarked, “A page loads in less than half a second when Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages is enabled instead of taking three seconds to load the average page”.

The most interesting fact here is that you can try all kinds of website speed enhancing tricks in this environment including reducing the server response times, image optimization, enabling browser catching and many others you know. Therefore we can say how Google’s AMP impacts SEO is something magical and highly beneficial to businesses.

The main thrust of the strategies employed by Facebook, Apple, Google is letting the websites work well on the mobile interfaces. Google claims, most users do not wish to stay on sites that take more than three seconds to load. Most mobile pages take an average of 8 seconds to load. There is however a stark difference between the three platforms. Google facilitates sharing content on the open web very easily without having to depend on an app.

Since the publishers’ websites are cached, they load in advance. Therefore the publishers can exercise more control over their pages. Going beyond what Apple and Facebook have achieved, Google lets the publishers place payrolls.

Most publishers focus more on Google today. The good news is that Google AMP lets web pages load faster. More than 5000 developers are working on the Google AMP Program and it is now gearing up to meet the comprehensive needs and expectations of the mobile users.

How it works
Since Google AMP version offers less design, it works faster. Since every Javascript is going to delay the loading speed by 100 milliseconds, the lesser the number of tags, the faster the loading speed. By creating the bare bones version of the mobiles, Google AMP has ruled out the need for third-party scripts like Javascript. Studies show that Google AMP optimized content is sitting on top of the search results.

Will Google AMP impact organic search results?
Note that AMP is never a ranking factor. However, it significantly impacts organic ranking by working from the peripheral aspects like clicks, impressions and user experience which all go into impacting SEO. The implication is that those sites that are not on the AMP bandwagon are sure to see a drop in the impressions, clicks and user engagement.

Final words
Most developers and site owners pay little thought to the viewing devices. Google has revealed that more than 50% of the search today happens over the mobiles. Irrespective of whether you are moving towards taking advantage of Google AMP, you need to let your sites load up faster to meet the evolving needs of today’s customers. The sure way to catch up with the trend is Google AMP.