How to use Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) to Rank Better on Mobile

How to use Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) to Rank Better on Mobile

By [Adrian Cojocariu](/content/blog/author/coadr93/ "Posts by Adrian Cojocariu"/index.html)

Optimizing a page for mobile speed? Not easy. Mobile search has come a very long way, especially since the Google Mobile Friendly Update, back in 2014.

Mobile optimization keeps evolving, and it happens fast. At first, we had separate mobile versions, then responsive designs, now we have Google AMP pushing strong. What AMP (accelerated mobile pages) is, if and how AMP can influence SEO and how it will impact your business – you can find the answers to all of these questions in the following article.

All this change, happening so fast, can get a little frustrating.

Whether you are an SEO Professional, Digital Marketing Agency, SMB or Brand Owner, cognitiveSEO is the only SEO software you’ll ever need.

It’s difficult to implement Google AMP and you’re not sure if it’s worthwhile spending that time.

In this article, we’ll be taking a look at exactly what Google AMP is. We’ll find out if we need it or not, how to easily implement it the right way and if it’s really good, or just another Google attempt to monopolize itself over the web.

  1. What Is Google AMP and How Does It Work?
  2. How Can AMP Improve SEO?
    1. Site Speed and Dwell Time
    2. The AMP Carousel, Cache and Third Party Apps
    3. How to Implement Google AMP
    4. How to Install AMP on WordPress
    5. How to Install AMP on Drupal
    6. How to Install AMP on Joomla
    7. How to Install AMP on Concrete5
    8. AMP for Magento and OpenCart
    9. Custom AMP Implementation
    10. How to Validate the AMP HTML
    11. What Happens If the AMP HTML Is not Valid?
  3. The Pros and Cons of AMP
  4. Conclusion

You might be thinking:

My website loads fast enough on mobile! I already have a responsive design and a cache plugin! Why do I even need Google AMP?

Here’s the deal:

If your website is blazing fast on mobile, you’re definitely not part of the majority. Mobile pages are still slow! More factors than you might think are involved.

A study from DoubleClick by Google states that more than 50% of mobile users decide to abandon a webpage if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

The study also states that 77% of mobile websites take longer than 10 seconds to load. The average load time of mobile sites on a 3G network is 19 seconds.

Yes, you read me right! It’s 19 seconds. And 4G only makes it 14 seconds, which isn’t all that great.

We, the marketers/publishers, might be OK with seeing pop-ups, ads, register forms, banners, videos, and so on. We profit from them. Sure, we optimize them for maximizing revenue and for performance, as well.

But think of it this way:

You’re now the reader. You’re standing at your desk, on your PC, looking for something on the internet. It’s not marketing related. Let’s say it’s a health-related issue, or some information you need on some legal problem. The first website you open takes 5 seconds to load. Your speakers are a little bit too loud, but you forgot. A video ad autoplays. You start searching for it on the screen while reaching for your speaker’s volume knob. You finally spot the video through the forest of ads. It’s on the top-right side of the screen. As you move your cursor up, an exit pop-up triggers. It’s full screen. The video still plays in the background. Are you mad yet? I sure am.

Now, all of this can happen pretty fast on a PC, at least if you have a decent computer and network connection.

On mobile, things are probably not so dramatic.

You know what happens?

People tap the back button. And boom! Just like that, the bounce rate jumps up high, and the dwell time goes down, as well as your rankings.

When you’re on the go, you either want to find some information REALLY fast, or you’re just browsing and won’t even bother waiting. A dozen of other articles are waiting out there.

We’ll dive into the details later, but first, let’s take a look at what Google AMP is, and how it works.

1. What Is Google AMP and How Does It Work?

Google AMP is short for Accelerated Mobile Pages. The project has been started by Google in partnership with Twitter, in order to make mobile browsing super fast.

In a nutshell, it’s a stripped-down version of HTML.

The developers claim that an accelerated mobile page is capable of loading up to 4 times faster than a regular HTML page.

One way or another, it’s a response to Facebook’s Instant Articles or Apple News. Although in many ways similar, an important difference is the fact that it’s open source.

The new mark-up restricts the use of JavaScript to only a few files that Google will provide. You will also have to use a specific form of CSS, but don’t worry: your site can still look pretty cool.

AMP is built for speed. The main concept is readability. Special design, effects and features are not important in the accelerated mobile page.

When a valid Google AMP page is posted and indexed, Google will then cache it on its servers. Once the page is cached, Google can rapidly fetch it for display when someone tries to view it. The AMP version is already faster by itself, but through heavy caching, the loading of the page in mobile browsers seems instant.

2. How Can AMP Improve SEO?

In the early days, before AMP was even released for the search engines, Google had speculated that it might impact SEO at some point.

They have not officially stated that AMP affects SEO in any way. In February 2016, John Mueller said in a Google Hangout that AMP isn’t a ranking signal.

AMP still isn’t officially a ranking factor in 2017. Here’s a tweet from John from early 2017:

AMP isn’t a ranking factor; if you decide to disable it, make sure to redirect appropriately. — John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) January 25, 2017

However, there are a lot of indirect factors that might lead to SEO improvements, on mobile and desktop as well.

Keep in mind that most people use AMP as a second option for their website. If you have a responsive website, you will mark the original HTML page as the canonical version. This means that you will have a rel=canonical from the AMP to the original version.

In this case, your main website will be the responsive version of the website, not the AMP one. Google will then index the fully responsive version of your website, and use that to calculate the quality score of your page.

At first, I thought that AMP was only for mobile. I mean… the name is Accelerated Mobile Pages, right? But John’s statement proves that you can have an AMP only website.

And guess what:

The AMP official website at ampproject.org is exclusively written in AMP HTML. There doesn’t seem to be any issue with rendering an AMP page on a desktop device. The site looks great. It even has nice animations on it. And of course, it is pretty fast.

3. How to Implement Google AMP

Ok, AMP looks cool. Now, how to get it?

Well, if you’re using one of the popular CMSs out there (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla) things are as simple as installing a plugin/module/extension, or whatever they are called.

3.1 How to Install AMP on WordPress

WordPress is the most popular CMS on the web. You’re probably using it. The WordPress development team already has an agreement with the team at AMP Project, so an easy implementation was expected. The default and official WordPress AMP plugin can be downloaded here. Yoast also had to release a glue SEO plugin to merge the metadata with the AMP format.

3.2 How to Install AMP on Drupal

Drupal also has its own plugin for AMP pages. If you wish to install it, you can get the plugin here.

3.3 How to Install AMP on Joomla

Joomla also has a number of available extensions for implementing Google AMP. Head over to https://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/ and search for AMP.

3.4 How to Install AMP on Concrete5

Even the new uprising Concrete5 has its own module for AMP pages.

3.5 AMP for Magento and OpenCart

The two most popular eCommerce CMSs also have their modules for the Accelerated Mobile Pages.

3.6 Custom AMP Implementation

If you’re not using one of the popular CMS platforms there, things aren’t that easy. Ideally, you should outsource this to a group of experienced programmers. If you have a custom platform, you probably already have a team.

4. The Pros and Cons of AMP

So far, most arguments against Google AMP have been annihilated. Not only that the problems were solved, but disadvantages now turned into advantages.

Despite this, many people still strongly disagree with AMP.

Conclusion
As marketers, we set the standards. Consider that users are more prone to remembering a bad experience rather than a good one. This is available in all situations. It’s the pain principle. Our brain is more prone to avoiding pain than to pursue happiness.

Google cares most about making their customers happy.

This article was about AMP. If the AMP initiative fails or doesn’t sound fair to you and you won’t use it, then this article is a call to all web developers, publishers, and advertisers there to do their best to improve the user experience of all their websites.