What is Accelerated Mobile Pages and How does it Differ from Responsive Web Design
Launched by the likes of Google, Twitter, WordPress and others, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an open-source project that is aimed at creating super fast loading web pages for mobile devices. AMP can be used for web pages that have static content. It is a web framework that permits optimised and streamlined use of languages like HTML, CSS and JavaScript (next to none, the only JavaScript that can be used is that of AMP off-the-shelf library). Hence, web pages that are compliant with the AMP specification are extremely lightweight and load quickly.
How is Accelerated Mobile Pages Good from SEO perspective?
- Web pages that are enabled by AMP load at lightning fast speeds. This matters in the view of a survey result in data according to which 40% of people are likely to leave a web page if its loading time exceeds 3 seconds. Fast loading AMP pages are likely to rank higher on SERP.
- When web pages load and display information quickly, they engage
users more effectively thus reducing their probability of leaving the website
without exploring more. Hence, AMP helps with bounce rate reduction. - AMP pages are featured in the Google carousel, which secures priority placement in mobile search results. The top of the search engine results is naturally the best place to be for any web page.
- Advertisements are displayed without the visual distractions of pop-ups, social sharing buttons, header images, forms, etc. This user-friendly display of ads is likely to invite more clicks from users.
- AMP offers support for tracking and analysing visitor behaviour through tags selection. Tracking things like visitor counts, clicks, conversions, link tracking and more are made easily available.
To learn how to display AMP pages in Google search properly, visit this setup help document.
Differences Between Accelerated Mobile Pages and Responsive Web Design:
- Responsive Web Design (RWD) approach is more about ensuring
flexibility of a web page, meaning that it offers consistent visual experience across all mediums. Whereas, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) focuses more on the speed at which the web page content is
delivered. - It is because of this principal difference in the priority that leaves RWD at a disadvantage when it comes to the mobile loading speed, and that makes AMP an excellent choice when the major concern is fast speed.
- RWD can be implemented for any kind (static and dynamic) of websites. Currently, AMP only works with websites that feature static content. So AMP can be used for web pages that have published content like blog posts, articles, etc.
- Implementation of RWD usually requires a complete design makeover
of the website. This is practically equivalent to replacing the existing website. However, AMP can be made to work with the existing (responsive or non-responsive) website with no need for any website redesign or replacement. However, keep in mind that AMP can be used
exclusively too. - Displaying a responsive web page is nothing but displaying the
same web page in different layouts depending on the device. Therefore, there are no duplicate content issues when it comes to RWD. However, in the case of AMP, the scenario is different. AMP pages have different URL from their non-AMP page version, and they are displayed from the Google AMP Cache. This means that there will be duplicate content issues that may need to be addressed.
Contact a Vesanique Design Technology Consultant for more information on how you can leverage Accelerated Mobile Pages on your website.
