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Is AMP the answer to turbo-boosting mobile search?

Gravytrain

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The Drum Network article

This content is produced by The Drum Network, a paid-for membership club for CEOs and their agencies who want to share their expertise and grow their business.

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September 21, 2016 | 4 min read

Almost everything we consume as a society is centred around saving you time, so that you can do and be more in every facet of your crazy lifestyle.

AMP

Rumour has it the latest edition of the Tesla Model S P100D accelerates faster on a runway than it would be if you dropped it out a plane. Yet, people would rather set it to autopilot so they can crunch through work e-mails or catch-up on last nights’ Great British Bake Off on the way to work, rather than do any actual driving. We always want to go faster, further and better than before. However, we are more interested in having the option available to have the fastest car on the market, than actually using that function.

There is no difference when it comes to searching online; when you feel your Bugatti Veyron is starting to feel a little dated, you want to immediately find out what the next ‘big thing’ is, and you won’t wait until you’re sitting at your desk at work to find out. When you want answers the moment a thought enters your mind, you pull out your mobile.

The rise of mobile

The surge in searches on mobile devices has grown massively over the last few years, as their technology has advanced to become fast enough and cheap enough for most people to own a decent device. For over a year now, searches on mobile devices have occurred more often than on desktops or tablets, which has prompted Google to adapt to the times.

Their answer: Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). These are lightweight HTML pages that have been technically optimised – analysed and stripped down to the minimum – in order to load faster on mobile devices. They are only downloading the core content of the page, not all the extra elements typically seen on a desktop version. Why? Because 53 per cent of us will abandon a page on mobile if it takes more than three seconds to load. A whopping three seconds. Yet, the average mobile site takes 19 seconds to load over a 3G connection.

If your site is falling into that 53 per cent trap, you are missing out on thousands, perhaps millions, of people discovering your content, and AMPs are a way of ensuring your access to these users across the entire Google landscape.

#AMPlify your site

Getting started with AMP would require some developer wizardry, and there are three basic options to choose from:

AMP HTML

These are custom mark-up tags which would need two versions of a page to exist, (the HTML changes are added to the version intended for AMP purposes). Certain restrictions on various forms of media would apply. It also means sacrificing page elements such as lead forms and comments. On the other hand, these sacrifices will be more than reciprocated with the amount of exposure gained for your brand.

AMP JS

This is a JavaScript framework catered for mobile pages, dealing mainly with resource handling but does allow for third party JS.

AMP CDN

Content Delivery Network will automatically optimise AMP-enabled pages and cache them for even faster delivery.

Google are actively expanding the use of AMPs across their search markets, meaning any sites that have been AMPlified will enjoy greater exposure over others. Currently, AMP implementation will not affect rankings, but Google did start to give priority to mobile-responsive sites in mobile rankings, so AMP could quickly follow suit.

Get your business fast across the finish line! Would you rather wait for your site to drop out the plane, or give it the AMP-turbo boost it needs to tear down the runway towards the excited users waiting at the checkered flag?

GravyTrain is a digital marketing agency based in Teddington

Google Technology

Content by The Drum Network member:

Gravytrain

Gravytrain is an award winning digital marketing agency based in South West London. We have 26 full time employees, and specialize in web development, PPC, SEO and digital PR.

Following a restructure at the beginning of 2015, Gravytrain’s first step was to start forging partnerships with their clients, rather than simply working for them.

Our aim was to help our partner’s businesses become more efficient, improve their performance, increase their market share and to make everything fully scalable.

We quickly realised that to achieve our aims, we would have to find a way to work faster whilst simultaneously spending less money. Our solution to this conundrum was to start automating as many different processes as possible.

Today, we have developed over 25 pieces of AdTech in house, which are exclusively for use by our clients. These have enabled us to achieve results previously thought impossible, without needing any extra people power.

At this year’s Drum Search Awards, we were thrilled to win Best B2B Campaign – SEO and receive a commendation for Best Use of PR – SEO. This success spurred us on to submit entries for two more awards ceremonies: The Drum Network Awards and the UK Search Awards. 

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