Never underestimate the importance of content that loads quickly and properly on a mobile device. As paramount as mobile-friendly websites are, with variants like different screen sizes and internet speeds, it can be a challenge perfecting mobile web pages.Google has always used user experience as the most important ranking factor, and this begins with page load time. Every time a web page takes too long to load (longer than 3 seconds), you lose a potential customer, subscriber, or visitor in general. Recently, Google introduced the idea of "mobile-friendly" labels in a mobile search result. This was added to a website which provided users with a great mobile experience by being responsive. This qualifier was quickly removed as Google found that the majority of pages in mobile search met the necessary mobile friendly requirements.Now, the latest way to improve user experience and mobile search results is "The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project".To help ensure you are up to date, we are going to explain the differences between a mobile-friendly page (responsive web design) and AMP.
What are mobile-friendly pages?
Responsive web design is a single website that offers premium functions across a range of device capabilities and sizes. Whether the device is a desktop, phone or tablet, the website responds and adjusts text, images and functionality to ensure optimum interactive legibility.
What is AMP?
AMP is an open-source project that was headed by Google to achieve lightning-fast content delivery. It addresses the main issue of slow mobile page load times, which we know to be the first potential pain point for a negative experience on a website. AMP works by leveraging the best ways to build lightweight versions of web pages for speedy delivery. It enforces a limited set of options for coding to help ensure accelerated loading and reliable performance.
AMP vs mobile-friendly pages
AMP offers a stripped-down version of your mobile site; it is built for speed. However, the quick loading speed comes with an added price tag. Because of its basic coding, the design of AMP pages might appear less elegant and outdated with reduced functionality. AMP doesn’t support the full functionality of websites that depend upon custom JavaScript technology and web forms.
Takeaways
Google has stated that since they started working to improve the user experience for those on mobile devices, they have witnessed an incredible adoption of AMP across all industries, including, entertainment, e-commerce, travel, cooking websites, etc. To date, there are more than 200 million AMP docs in the Google index, with many more being added each week. As the number of searches from mobile devices continue to increase at a surging rate, AMP has become more and more important for search marketers. It's not a strategy you should ignore in today's mobile dominated digital age. The good news is that AMP integrates with Google to allow a mobile usability report in search consoles for issues in relation to mobile responsiveness under 'search traffic'. You can search for any issues with AMP under "search appearance" and you can bring it all together by adding Google Analytics. For help getting started, contact KitelyTech today.Call us on (800) 274 2908 for more information.
