The increase in mobile Internet traffic has been considered for several years. In fact, in 2018, this traffic represents more than 50% of the total Internet traffic and is still increasing. The speed of loading pages on mobile becomes a major issue for websites. To meet this growing demand, websites must adapt to the mobile format to offer an ever more qualitative service to mobile users.
THE AMP FORMAT, A REVOLUTIONARY NEW WEB TOOL
IMPROVED USER EXPERIENCE
IMPROVED USER EXPERIENCE
The AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, or mobile pages accelerator. This format speeds up the display of web pages on smartphones or tablets. Launched by Google in early 2016, it reduces the loading time of mobile pages from 15 to 85%, allowing almost instantaneous loading. Indeed, this technology will quickly load content and images to provide the information of the page to the user in record time.
Thus, this format makes it possible to improve the user experience by saving the time of the mobile users, and by allowing not to lose their attention by maximizing the speed of the loading time.
A NEW WAY OF UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION
This format also offers media sites a new way of understanding information with the creation of carousels. Thus, Google offers news carousels that scroll automatically on the search engine, to provide diverse content to mobile users and at the same time better referencing the sites benefiting from this optimization, especially for news.
The Google AMP format works by optimizing the loading of web pages by allowing Google’s servers to directly host the content while leaving the benefit of advertising revenue to the hosting site, thus not penalizing sites with this content. system.
THE IMPACTS OF AMP ON SEO
Google’s SEO algorithm is complex and takes into account a multitude of criteria. However, in order to provide the most qualitative service possible to its users, Google considers the speed of loading sites as a prime criterion for SEO. Thus, for two sites with the same information, Google’s algorithm will favor the site in AMP format, whose loading time should be well below that of a conventional web page.
In addition, the sites having access to this technology have on the browser a logo allowing them to stand out from other sites and attract the attention of users, which is a real asset on the Web in terms of natural referencing.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
The web trend favors mobile-friendly sites. Thus, the responsive sites, that is to say, adapted to the mobile format, have developed more and more in recent years. Today, the AMP format tends to further improve the web experience on smartphones for users.
But Google does not want to stop there. Since 2018, the American giant has launched AMP stories. This concept allows sites to offer a new content format. AMP stories are automatic dynamic animations offered by websites. On the concept of the stories of Snapchat, Facebook or Instagram, it is about developing a fun format to transmit the information that challenges the user and gives him access to a vast content very quickly. This new concept is expected to grow significantly to scale up on the mobile networks of the Web.
THE LIMITS OF THE AMP FORMAT
However, the AMP format has some limitations. First, the weight of Web pages with AMP technology is limited to 50 KB. This constraint limits the content that can be offered by web players with this improvement, the opportunities to play on branding and differentiation from competitors. Also, dynamic elements are disabled to minimize the page size and allow optimized loading. Finally, the CSS style of the pages is greatly simplified in order to have a faster loading of the web pages.
All these constraints are acceptable but tend to simplify as much as possible the structure of the Web pages which limits the quality and the diversity of the contents proposed to the users.
In addition, the use of AMP format implies that Google supports the hosting of web pages using a cache system. From then on, the search engine becomes the owner of the contents. The control of the author of the contents thus becomes limited and that tends to constrain the sites at the origin of these.
In addition, by minimizing the weight of web pages and postings, the AMP format significantly limits ad revenue, which can be a primary source of funding for many sites.
Also, the system still has some flaws, and it may be difficult for some AMP-format sites to interpret their analytic data. In fact, when a user navigating on an AMP page switches to a link redirecting towards the hosting site of the content, this user is considered as an external user. Note that Google is supposed to have solved this problem, so you should not see this difference if you made the leap to AMP technology.
However, the latter is much more efficient and fast than the responsive and could be brought to completely supplant this practice. While mobile-friendly has become obvious on the Web, AMP is still the most advanced format for delivering the best user experience for mobile users.
CAN WE DO WITHOUT THE AMP FORMAT TO OPTIMIZE ITS SEO?
The AMP format is a very fast and efficient technology that offers a quality user experience by significantly reducing the loading time of mobile web pages – even eliminating it completely. However, it is possible to have a site “mobile friendly” without going through AMP. Many SEO experts agree that a site whose loading time is properly optimized will have nothing to envy in AMP format.
IDENTIFY THE HEAVY IMAGES OF YOUR WEBSITE
Images are the most expensive data on web pages and result in load length. Being able to identify the size of the elements of the web page is essential to optimize the loading.
OPTIMIZE THEM WITHOUT LOSING QUALITY
In a second step, reducing the size of the heavy images makes it possible to lighten the weight of the page and thus to reduce loading times. Several free tools on the Internet can reduce the size of these images without altering their quality.
OPTIMIZE PLUGINS
In addition, it is also possible to optimize plugins, heavy files slowing the loading of web pages, reducing them to the maximum or optimizing them to make them lighter and save in loading time.
ALLEVIATE THE WORDPRESS THEME
We can also think of lightening the theme WordPress, allowing to load the script in a second time, allowing for faster access to content.
Thus, these tips improving the user experience by reducing loading times, they directly optimize the SEO. Google, however, strongly encourages to switch to AMP format to enjoy the best SEO possible with an unmatched loading speed, but requires to accept the constraints imposed by this optimization. Thus, this technology is not necessarily for all types of websites.
In the information sites or for the sites including a blog, the use of the AMP format will probably still develop a lot. However, switching to the AMP format is not at all an obligation for sites that are already optimized for mobile-friendly, and does not necessarily guarantee the first place in the SERPs. A number of constraints are repelling a number of site owners the major one being the loss of ownership of content that is now hosted on Google’s servers.
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