AMP is Google technology that provides website owners with the ability to create web pages that are able to load almost instantly. This technology once stood for Accelerated Mobile Pages but is now used across different platforms such as desktop computers and web browsing. This web component framework was created in response to research done by Google that showed that users leave mobile websites if they do not load within three seconds. It’s clear from this that the modern customer expects quick loading from any website they visit, which is why you should do what you can to minimize load times on your website. When you’re searching for ways to improve the performance of your website, there are many fantastic performance plugins that can be installed directly into your WordPress site.
Before the creation of AMP, Google ranked websites based on the loading speed and relevance of their articles. As a result of the update, articles, and stories formatted with AMP now get first priority. Even if your website is relatively quick to load, it’s imperative that you use AMP if you want your website to be ranked highly on Google. A standard mobile site takes around 19 seconds to load when accessed via a 3G connection, which is entirely too long for the vast majority of customers.
AMP generally favors faster loading speeds over different site functions, which is aimed at making sure that the site visitor is provided with great user experience. Knowledge of AMP is essential for online publishers, digital marketers, and digital content creators. No matter what type of digital marketing strategies you’re currently using, these strategies likely won’t be at their most effective unless you pair them with a website that users will enjoy spending time on. This article offers a more detailed overview of Google AMP and how it can help your website bring in more traffic.
How Does Google AMP Work?
There are three things that make up any web page on the internet, which include CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. HTML is a basic language that decides how web pages and documents are going to be displayed within a web browser. CSS is a styling language that goes a step further by determining how HTML documents display font styles, colors, and layouts of pages. JavaScript is a programming language that gives you the ability to alter the HTML and CSS elements that have been placed on your website, which makes for a more engaging and interactive site.
AMP uses specialized formats of both JavaScript and HTML to ensure that a website is able to load more efficiently. To make sure that the AMP project was handled properly, Google collaborated with numerous companies, one of which was WordPress. Because of this collaboration, WordPress now offers a plugin that makes it easier to use AMP, which is available here. This plugin works across all mobile and desktop devices, which makes it a step up from the previous accelerated mobile pages technology. The top features of this plugin include support for all core WordPress themes, a CSS tree-shaking feature that gets rid of any unused CSS, a compatibility tool that helps with debugging, and AMP-first experiences which enable AMP without adversely affecting your website.
When using AMP, less is always more. The relatively strict formatting and function limits that come with AMP exist to provide faster loading whenever possible. AMP files are able to take advantage of numerous architectural and technical approaches that specifically prioritize speed. As such, users are provided with a faster and more consistent experience. If you want users across all devices to have a great experience, you should use AMP.
Google AMP’s HTML Standards
A major component of Google AMP is how it handles HTML on a webpage. HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, which is the basic markup language for all documents that are meant to be displayed within a web browser. This language is comprised of numerous shortcodes that are typed as tags in a text file that the website owner creates. These tags determine what the text will appear like once saved as an HTML file. While there are many creative things that you can do with HTML, the AMP version of HTML has been specifically optimized for greater speed. This means that Google AMP HTML has gotten rid of unnecessary functions that tend to slow loading times, however, it’s essentially the same as standard HTML.
Google AMP: JavaScript
As touched upon previously, JavaScript is a highly powerful scripting language that allows you to control multimedia, create content that dynamically updates, and create unique functions on your website. This tool provides you with the ability to make your website more interactive, which is important if you want site visitors to remain engaged with your website.
When a web browser encounters a block of JavaScript, it typically runs it in a specific order from top to bottom, which means that you will need to pay attention to the order in which you write your code. When AMP is integrated into your website, it uses asynchronous JavaScript, which means that the code will allow programs to do more than one thing at a time and load essential structures first before additional features. This helps to improve the loading speed of any website that uses JavaScript.
Google AMP Leverages The Browser Cache
Web caching is a kind of process that involves data being stored to be reused in the future. When data is stored or cached on a server after the first visit to a web page, a subsequent visit to the same page will result in a copy of the data being sent to the user, which keeps the initial server from becoming overloaded. The cached data doesn’t need to be loaded a second time, which should minimize load times for the end-user.
Google AMP is designed specifically to leverage the browser cache by including a cache of AMP documents that have been published to the internet, which can be accessed by anyone. By saving content on a data cloud, AMP helps to facilitate better load times. When you use Google AMP, you will have the ability to update or remove content from the cache whenever you want.
Other Features of Google AMP
While the main features of Google AMP are centered around optimizing web pages, there are three additional features of the current AMP project that could prove useful to you and your website. These features include AMP Stories, AMP Ads, and AMP Emails.
AMP Stories
AMP Stories is a useful feature that is focused on using big and bold visuals to tell a story via an advertisement or article. With AMP Stories, it’s possible to create visual narratives that you can use for marketing purposes. These narratives can include engaging animations and interactive elements that are clickable. This aspect of AMP is entirely free and can be quickly integrated into your website as well as the marketing materials that you’re creating.
If you want site visitors to be engaged with the content on your website, this particular AMP feature allows you to create dynamic interactions that make your website feel more modern and approachable. Some additional benefits of using AMP Stories include quick loading times, the ability to track and measure your results with analytics, immersive storytelling opportunities, and strong advertising support.
AMP Ads
AMP Ads is a feature of AMP that allows you to create HTML ads. It does this with an AMP version of HTML called AMPHTML. This version of HTML is similar to the original except it has standards to increase loading speed. While AMP fully supports standard HTML ads, there are times when these ads load slowly, which can quickly bog down the load speeds of your website. When you use the AMPHTML tool, HTML ads will load as quickly as the content on your website, which improves the visibility of your ads and should help with customer engagement. These ads are also very safe and secure from hackers and malware. This is because they are only delivered once they have been validated and deemed safe by AMP.
AMPHTML ads are typically around six times faster than standard HTML ads that are included on AMP pages, which allows them to be much more effective, garner more views, and are more likely to have a strong performance. With this tool, you can monitor the performance of your AMPHTML ads and alter the pricing accordingly. By making necessary tweaks and changes, you can provide your customers with relevant ads that should also help you to maximize your return on investment.
AMP Emails
AMP Emails is another important marketing feature with the AMP Project that provides site owners with the ability to include various AMP components within the emails that they send to customers, which basically means that the advanced functionality of a modern app will be available within an email. Without AMP, emails can be static, which provides certain limitations to how you can use emails to engage with your audience.
The inclusion of AMP functionality allows for improved personalization, engaging options for subscriber-list emails as well as promotional emails, and more interactivity with the email content. If you regularly engage in email marketing, AMP Emails can be an invaluable tool for your marketing efforts.
Do You Have More Questions About Google AMP?
Google AMP is a powerful tool that is no longer constricted to mobile web pages, which means that you can improve the speed of your web pages for both desktop and mobile users. By making it easier to use HTML and JavaScript without running into lengthy load times, you should be able to provide all of your users with a speedy website that can load in three seconds or less. Because of how valuable speed is to the modern user, any reduction in load times may allow you to bring in more traffic.
