When I first heard about Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, I was excited to jump on the AMP bandwagon as soon as possible. Waving farewell to slow, clunky, non-optimized websites, I started experimenting with accelerated mobile pages only to realize that, despite having plenty of pros, they have cons as well. I was all in for speeding up my web pages on mobile (which means better UX and higher mobile ranking), but I wasn’t ready to sacrifice ad revenue.
Website owners, webmasters, and digital marketers need to cut through the hype and decide if their sites actually need to start tackling Google AMP Project. The search giant did a pretty good job highlighting all the benefits of implementing pages that load instantly (especially after announcing a mobile-first index) but avoided the obvious disadvantages.
AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages, is a free, open-source framework that allows you to create mobile pages that deliver content quickly. It consists of HTML, JS, and cache libraries that, thanks to specific extensions and AMP-focused properties, accelerate load speed for mobile pages, even if they feature ‘rich’ content like infographics, PDFs, audio or video files.
AMP is a bare-bones version of your site’s mobile pages. It displays content that matters but gets rid of all the elements that take a toll on your site’s speed and performance.
AMP is important because it helps web pages load faster which potentially improves usability and convinces visitors to stay longer on your site engaging with your content. The logic is straightforward: faster load time leads to better engagement, which reduces bounce rate and improves mobile ranking.
However, AMP doesn’t improve engagement on its own. It doesn’t make your content more useful or entertaining. If your load times are perfect (which, according to HubSpot, is less than 1.5 seconds) but your content is boring, your SERPs won’t increase because of your high bounce rate. To make AMP work for your site, you need to have the best of both worlds: fast load time plus superb content.
AMP Pros
#1 It speeds up website load time
#2 It increases mobile ranking
#3 It improves server performance
AMP Cons
#1 Ad revenue is reduced
#2 Analytics are a bit stripped
#3 Amazing speed is achieved, thanks to cache
Responsive design is a must-have simply because it is recommended by Google. But does it make sense to invest in responsive when we have AMP? My answer is: yes, it does.
AMP allows you to get your site ready to mobile-first index without much pain. Simply select high-priority pages, then place several additional tags and a line of code. Don’t forget to test your pages using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
However, AMP ties your site to Google. Without the cache stored on Google’s servers, you don’t have any mobile pages at all. You trade your site’s liberty for some temporary ranking benefits (which are not guaranteed, by the way).
I recommend waiting several months until we understand what Google’s next steps are concerning AMP and the mobile-first index. But, until then, it makes sense to apply the need-for-speed approach and accelerate your responsive website as much as you can.
Courtesy of SearchEngineJournal
