Accelerated Mobile Pages: Is Your Website Ready?

AMP or accelerated mobile pages have become a core part of every website’s effort to stay current in Google searches.

In this post, I will go over the main steps you need to follow to ensure your website is fully optimized for AMP and a few alternatives if AMP is not your choice.

What do I need to know about AMP before we start?

Accelerated mobile pages allow websites to load faster when looked load websites faster when viewed on a mobile phone. The faster the website loads on your phone, the better optimized that website is for AMP.

AMP is divided into three parts:

AMP HTML

This is Html markup along with website components.

AMP JavaScript

This is the part of AMP that manages the page loading.

AMP caches

This 3rd component ensures that all pages loading on your phone are validated.

Is It Necessary For Me To Do This For My Website?

In a word, absolutely. AMP has become a significant ranking factor for all websites.

According to this graph from statista.com, there has been more than a 50% increase in phone-specific Google searches from 2015 to 2021.

As of 2021, Google has 4 billion human beings searching for answers on it. And according to the above graph, half of those users search using their cell phones.

How Can I Optimize My Website For AMP?

A-Implement Responsive Design; ignore the other options.

Usually, for AMP optimization, you can separate URLs, employ dynamic serving, or make sure to use a responsive design.

Responsive web design will ensure that the best speed will be achieved no matter what device is used to access a website.

How Do I Know If My Website Is Already Employing Responsive Web Design

The answer to this depends on the tool used to create your website, i.e., WordPress, Wix, Weebly.

For WordPress sites:

Congratulations, if WordPress was used to create your site, your website already employs responsive web design.

No matter what device is used to access your content, that content will load quickly.

Fast-loading pages will make the difference between more leads, sales, and money in the long run, so yes, very good.

To make sure you are covered, go ahead and download this plugin for your WordPress site:

AMP for WP is something we use here at SAAI, and it does not disappoint. We highly recommend it.

If you would like more options, click here.

For Wix sites:

Wix sites are also optimized with responsive web design.

Go to GTMetrix.com, search for your website, then pay attention to this area:

To improve the above score, you will need to do some manual things on your site like:

• Move and edit elements within your site
• Edit text, size, and font colors
• Change background images of your site
• Play around with the hidden and visible pages within the mobile menu of your site

For Weebly sites:

Weebly sites are all optimized from the get-go with responsive web design coding. To make for even better optimization:

• Play around with your theme’s measurements so that you are using the most efficient size
• Make sure the theme is responsive when choosing a theme for your website. This feature should be listed in the description area of the theme before you download it.

For a comprehensive list of Weebly themes as mentioned above, go here and choose the best theme according to the type of website you have, i.e., e-commerce, informational, etc.

B-Take Advantage Of Google SC

Google Search Console is considered a unique tool for a good reason.

Google is the king of kings, and they provide several tools to all website owners to allow for fair competition.

Google search console analyses all activity coming to and from your website, providing you with the exact things you need to fix for your website to perform at top-notch levels.

One of these things is, of course, AMP trackers:

By accessing your Google SC account and clicking on both options above, Google will let you know how fast your website is loading when someone lands on it.

Another good option is to do a quick search for your website on a Mobile-friendly test page; click here to do this.

If you get one of these, you are on the right track:

C-Have A Live Look At Your Site

There is a great resource that can be used to see for yourself how your website looks on different devices.

Go here, type in your URL, and voila!

For different device sizes, you will be shown how your website looks.

The Importance Of UX(User Experience) On Your Website

Gone are the days when the only thing needed to rank were design and technical savvy(although those things are still important)

Nowadays, User experience is a TOP aspect of your site that needs to be addressed regularly.

Google’s number 1 goal is to provide practical answers to all questions, and due to this, how visitors feel scrolling through your site is considered very heavily by Google when assigning you a ranking score.

How Can I Improve Mobile User Experience On My Website?

We have already covered several strategies that, when done together, will improve the overall user experience for every visitor to your website.

A-Make Sure Your Mobile Content Is Not Hard To Get Through

There is a big difference between taking 5 to 10 minutes to read through the answer to your question and reading through a 25-minute essay on the same subject.

According to Consumerwebwatch, it takes a regular visitor to your website 0.05 seconds to judge whether or not their question is being answered.

Make sure all your content can be read through in as accessible a format as possible. Aim for an 8th-grade reading level when putting together your content.

B-Your Mobile Pages Should Load In Less Than A Second

Yep, that’s how long someone in 2022 will stick around to see the labors of all your digital hard work.

You can use the tactics I mentioned above to improve the loading speed of your website on mobile devices. In addition, you can also:

Use PageSpeed Insights

Go here, enter your website URL and:

The above is the page speed of our little website. In the same way, your website will have a score; improve this score until you get as close to 100% as possible, or less than 1 second, shown in this specific area above:

Click here for a different website you can use.

C-Use HTML, Not Flash, If Your Website Content Contains Videos

This one is for video bloggers/tik tok/Youtubers. Make sure your site uses HTML instead of Flash, as videos and images will not come through or will not look as high quality on mobile pages when using Flash.

How Can I Find Out If My Website Is Using Flash Or Not?

This depends on what you are using to record your videos. Youtube, for example, already uses HTML.

Most mobile devices use MP4-type files or similar, which can be converted to either flash or HTML.

To convert MP4 files to HTML, check out this guide.

D-Negative Space Is A Smart Tactic

Negative Space within Web Design refers to the blank spaces outside of the content of each of your pages.

This allows the visitor to your site to view content easier. The goal is to make sure the content on your website goes from looking like this on a mobile:

To this:

See how there is space on the sides of the text above. This allows for easier viewing.

Mobile SEO To Improve Your Amp Pages

Since we here at SAAI focus on Web Design and SEO, let’s review some strategies to improve your SEO for mobile devices.

Why Should I Care About Mobile SEO?

Google already considers SEO by itself as a critical ranking factor.

Due to the above, it’s just natural to think that mobile SEO should be considered just as important.

Take a look at this graph which shows just how much mobile searches have surged in the last few years.

The above numbers are in the billions, so let’s talk strategy here.

By releasing a mobile-friendly update, Google has ensured all websites are optimized for mobile searches.

This update penalized any website that was not mobile optimized.

How Do I Mobile Optimize for SEO?

A-Improve Your CTR(Click Through Rate)

The Click-through rate is the time(usually in seconds) a visitor to your site will stay on any page before clicking away.

If you remember, earlier in this post, we mentioned Google Search Console. Head over to the Google SC account, and do a performance search between your desktop and your mobile device till you get to these results:

From just comparing the two numbers and if your desktop CTR is better than your mobile, find out what keyword/s make up this difference in CTR.

Once you figure out what keywords are in place, search for the keywords on your phone and see if there is anything you can change on the mobile version of your site to improve click-through. An example would be to edit your title tag.

In general, at this point, you want to go through all of the areas in the screenshot above, make changes so CTR is as close as possible between desktop and mobile searches, then look back after a week or so to see if the changes you made improved CTR.

B-The Importance Of UX Signals

As mentioned earlier in this post, user experience is the number goal of Google.

The shorter people spend on your website, the less you rank Google searches.

Google will assume that the high bounce rate is caused by poor user experience.

The Importance Of Google Analytics

To measure UX signals, a great tool to use is Google analytics. This tool can be used in addition to Google’s search console.

What’s The Difference Between Google Search Console And Google Analytics?

Google Analytics tracking was designed to provide details on users of your site. Visitor tracking metrics will be covered by this tool.

Google Search Console, on the other hand, was designed by the Google overlords to provide tracking metrics related to search engines and SERPs(search engine results page)

How Can I Use Google Analytics To My Advantage?

1-Go to your Google Analytics account:

2-Go to your Google Analytics account:

Go to Engagement > Pages and screens.

3-Click on the “+” sign next to “Page title and screen class”:

4-Click on “device” then “Device Category”:

5-You will now see all metrics for your website divided into “Desktop” and “Mobile.”

6-Scroll to the right and focus on the column “Average Engagement time.”

7-Wherever you see a big difference between desktop and mobile engagement time, work on either, so both are as close as possible.

If visitors stay longer on your desktop version of a page, you visit that same page on your mobile and see if there is anything driving visitors away faster, i.e.e bad design, cluttered screen look, etc.

Final Things To Consider

OK, so based on this blog post, you might be inclined to think AMP will always be around,d but that is not the case.

Just like search engine optimization is more of a concept to be followed rather than one “never changing” software or program, accelerated mobile pages are something that will continue changing.

New companies(besides Google) make versions of programs/plugins that optimize mobile web speed. Here are some examples:

Verizon LTE

Verizon LTE is slowly becoming a very reliable mobile speed provider.

This means that no matter where you are, any site you access on your mobile device will load fast due to Verizon’s network. This means there would technically be no need for AMP-optimized pages.

The same goes for 5G, which is fast and slowly becoming more reliable.

Schema.org

Schema is another alternative to AMP. Its purpose is to standardize HTML tags to create better Google results within a specific subject.

You can go here for a more comprehensive overview of what it is, as Schema is more on the coding side of web page creation.

Thank you so much for checking out our latest blog post!

Before you go, here’s a bit about us at SAAI:

Here at SAAI, we do Search Engine Optimization

WITH SEO-Your website will allow you to pay your rent/bills/employees. It’s that simple.

Have you ever walked into the mall ahead with NO choice BUT to go through a random store first? Well, Search Engine Optimization will make YOUR business that store people HAVE to walk through.

SEO will place your business on page 1 of Google search, so your product is seen FIRST.

WITHOUT SEO-Your website will falter and fail.

It’s that simple. Imagine your store is located in the BACK of the mall where it’s too far to walk, so NO ONE ever goes there.

If patrons do not come through your doors, your business will falter and fail… you will not pay rent.. affairs in order… headstone shopping. You get the idea.

Here at SAAI, we do Web Design.

WITH a helpful page, DESIGN- Your online presence will make people want to stay.LOOK around! Ever been to a store where everything was so easy to get to, you NEVER got lost and knew precisely how to get everywhere? That’s what an effective, SALES-oriented well-designed website will do for your business. Our Brooklyn SEO agency can make a difference.

WITHOUT an effective page DESIGN-Your website will look like a war zone. People will know they are IN a store but have no idea WHAT is going on, WHERE they should go, or HOW to buy IF they find what they’re looking for.

People will leave your website almost immediately; you won’t get the sale, you will not pay rent.. affairs in order… headstone shopping. You get the idea.

We looked around the net and made sure WE are doing what others are not:

1-You; you get a response to all inquiries within 24 hours.

2-You, receive constant support, so all questions are answered. 

3-You are ONLY 1 of 2 to 3 ideal clients at a time that we take on to ensure we give you our undivided attention.

We feel it is more essential to provide QUALITY service than to meet some insane “100 client quota.”

4-The above rule allows your deadlines to be completed without issue, ensuring the quality of service and guaranteeing that you will stay with us for the long run.

5-To avoid any issues or misunderstandings, we only take on clients that we know we will be able to help.

Please email or give us a call and Let’s chat! 

You can also continue learning about web design and SEO for your website by reading some of our other blog posts below.