Business Owners: 4 Things You Need to Know About AMP

Business Owners: 4 Things You Need to Know About AMP

According to Think with Google, 70 percent of users leave a website because it takes too long to load, and 40 percent of online shoppers will leave a retail or travel site if it takes more than three seconds to load. Google takes website speed seriously enough that it’s rolling out a new initiative to make mobile pages load lightning fast. The new Amplified Mobile Page initiative (AMP) introduces a solution with a new open source HTML.
What does this newest initiative mean for business owners? If your website isn’t already optimized for mobile devices, you’re behind the times. In fact, your websites isn’t ranking as high as it could because Google penalizes sites that aren’t optimized for mobile. Fortunately, you can get up and running with a mobile-optimized site relatively quickly and focus on the AMP initiative.

Get the Plugin

WordPress has already released an Accelerated Mobile Pages Project plugin, and other consumer platforms are quickly following. Load up the plugin into your WordPress site to turn your pages into AMP compatible versions. Then test your site on multiple mobile devices, such as the new Samsung Galaxy S7 or the iPhone 6s. The plugin can also help streamline the process, so you don’t need to loop in your web developer. However, AMP and its plugin do have some critics.

Yoast, a WordPress SEO plugin, complains that the initiative restricts HTML functionality and requires stripping down a web page to make it load faster. For simpler websites, the restrictions may not be noticeable or impact your business at all. Load up the plugin and see what you think before removing it or looping in your web designer. And if you’re ready to take it a step further, brush up on the Amplified Mobile Pages’ website tutorials to learn to build an AMP file.

Think Responsive

Google spent the last few years promoting the need for responsive design in an effort to make websites look consistent and load fast on any device. At its core, responsive design includes a clean interface with easy navigation and quick loading rich content. Business owners can still stick to that responsive philosophy as they work to optimize their website for Amplified Mobile Pages. Regardless of Google’s changes, clean, quality design and great content isn’t going away.

Focus on Speed

You don’t have to wait until Google fully rolls out its Amplified Mobile Pages initiative to take action. Get started now by focusing on the speed of your website. Your efforts can make you that much more ready for the initiative as well as increase your search engine ranking. Google already favors faster loading websites that are optimized for mobile. You’re already thinking about responsive design. Now you can take that next step to ditch plugins you aren’t using, as well as old media files and uploads that are slowing down your site.

Hold off on SEO for Now

It’s still too early to determine how SEO will affect AMP, if it does at all. For now, business owners should focus on developing useful, unique content that loads quickly. Google has officially said AMP won’t affect search results, but they’ve also said they favor faster loading websites that are optimized for mobile devices. So essentially, AMP matters to business owners looking to rank high and keep consumers on their websites.