SEO glossary: AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)

 

What is AMP - Accelerated Mobilel Pages?

More and more users are surfing the Internet with mobile devices and using classic PCs or laptops less frequently. Added to this are fast data connections to load content in the shortest possible time. To make surfing on mobile devices even friendlier, AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) was once launched.

 

The aim of AMP is to noticeably reduce the loading times of content on mobile devices. A mobile website is adapted according to certain specifications and may only contain certain elements that do not slow down loading times.

 

 

How does AMP work?

If website operators and publishers want to switch to Accelerated Mobile Pages, they have to create a separate version. Among other things, the HTML code is kept much leaner for AMP, and the same applies to CSS. In both cases, the file size must not exceed 50 kB, and they must also be implemented in the HTML.

 

In addition, AMP works with asynchronous JavaScript. This means that such content is loaded immediately without the use of external scripts. This is because these would also significantly increase the loading time.

 

Hat ein Publisher seine Seite erfolgreich als AMP erstellt, erkennt Google sie eigenständig. Zeitgleich erfolgt die Aufnahme auf einen Proxyserver in einem CDN (Content Delivery Network). Geben Nutzer also die Domain einer AMP in den Browser ein, werden alle Daten der Seite blitzschnell vom CDN geladen.

 

If website operators would like to make their Internet presence AMP-compliant, they receive explicit help from Google for this.

 

 

What are the advantages of AMP?

Search engines use the ALT TEXTto be able to correctly assign the content of an image. Although they index the image for the image search, they still depend on a meaningful description text. This is evaluated by the crawler and the image is listed accordingly in the search results. It is therefore all the more important that an image is provided with a reasonable and meaningful alt text.

 

During on-page optimization, the image must be examined closely and its content entered in the alt tag. If an alt text is missing, in the worst case the visitor can leave the page again, which can result in a poor bounce rate. So if you label your images properly with alt texts, you can definitely generate traffic from the image search in the long term.

 

The following are the advantages of AMP:

 

• High charging speed, which is clearly noticeable even in 2G and 3G networks. Charging times of less than 1 second are common here.
• At the same time, the high loading speed means a better user experiencesince users stay longer. Thus, 2 SEO factors are positively fulfilled and improved at the same time.
• Successfully implemented AMP are displayed in the SERPs specially marked in the SERPs. Users will see a small lightning icon indicating that these are Accelerated Mobile Pages. It can send a positive signal to the user.
• News site operators are listed in the Top Story carousel, which can result in more traffic
• Using AMP results in less data volume on both sides (operator and user)

 

Does AMP have any disadvantages or limitations?

Depending on the situation, there may be some disadvantages or limitations:

• Operators can insert JavaScript only in the form of AMP tags. Loading on external scripts is no longer possible.
• Not all forms of advertising are permitted with AMP
• AMP consists exclusively of lean HTML and CSS. This makes the layout much more minimalistic and sparse.
• At the same time, some functions, such as social media buttons or comment fields, fall out