The innovative and fast way to track mobile device content is now through the Google AMP Project. Due to the fact that it depends on a certain form of HTML which is called AMP HTML in order to strip down the way the content is presented it is an improvement on the more traditional serving mobile content model.
The way this affects things in general is that the user of a mobile will be able to view articles with relatively basic images and texts, however the loading time for this content is now increased ten times faster, possibly even more then the content which is traditionally formatted.
What Makes AMP So Important for SEO?
Google loves to remind the industry of the importance of page-speed and mobile-readiness in order for a site’s content to be able to rank highly on the SERPs (search engine results pages). There are of course other ranking signals, however, the faster a site is and the it is adapted to mobile devices the chances are higher that it may actually be seen on and even clicked on by a Google search user.
Google has evolved since 2013, it is no longer just the site to go to for links to other sites by providing search results, it is now also a company which provides answers to your questions via search results.
However there are times when a simple answer is not possible, at this moment another page may have to be loaded and this can be quite slow process on mobile devices. This is why Google has been researching ways in which the can make the search results obtained after clicking on a link load much faster.
Now, and thanks to Google´s AMP Project these options are showing up more and more in SERPs.
How Exactly Does AMP Function?
Google AMP has three parts:
1. AMP HTML
2. AMP JS
3. AMP Cache
AMP HTML
This parts has a set of pre-processing tags which are strictly defined. These are primarily only image embedding and text formatting tags. For example; amp-pixel, amp-ad, amp-video, amp-ing and amp-embed.
AMP JS
This part is a Javascript file which is very limited. All external resources are loaded in the background, aka asynchronous manner. This limits the “render blocking” from being able to interfere with how rapidly what has been searched for by the user is rendered on their screen. Any irrelevant material in the article that is not actual wording or imagery is loaded last.
By predicting which DNS connections and resources will be used and by downloading and re-sizing the images this part also gets a hold of and pre-renders the content. This is all important in order to make the work the mobile device needs to do as well as economize the use of data.
AMP Cache / The AMP Content Delivery Network (AMP CDN)
This part is in essence the heavy lifting and getting a hold of the content you most recently used and pre positioning it globally that is done by Google’s system of servers. This means that lest say you requested a page from China, this does not have to be sent over and over again to Texas every time it is requested. What Google does is instead place an optimized and pre-rendered copy of said AMP page on a server which sole to or in China. Every time an article is updated or added the CDN is refreshed.
The Ups and The Downs
Pros
The relationship between publisher and reader is improved when articles load faster. The most obvious benefit for publishers who use AMP is of course speed, this betters the SEO. Speed equals more views on your page and less readers who are frustrated. This also means that ads will be viewed more, content will be shared more often and there will be more engagement.
Cons
The biggest con is that in the AMP content there are no forms. In other words if you want to build leads with the use of an optin-form, at this moment it would not be possible. There are also no external Javascript or external stylesheets so when it comes to user experience it is a tad basic and lacks a wow factor.
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