Are AMP pages effective for SEO? Will the introduction increase traffic?
In July 2018, Google implemented a speed update, and the page display speed is incorporated as a mobile search ranking factor. Even though the current situation is early, it does not mean that it is ranked high in the rankings, but it seems that very slow pages are actually being affected. However, as Google offers PageSpeed Insights, isn't website acceleration a theme that should be addressed to improve the user experience (UX)?
However, we feel that many of our clients do not check their websites in an environment similar to that of our customers, and we do not care much about the display speed. In fact, Google reports improvements in mobile page display speed.
· The “user-centric performance index” for one-third of the slower traffic improved by 15% to 20% in 2018. 2017 could not confirm improvement
· When viewed by country, display speed improvements were seen in 95% of countries
· Departures increase with slow display, but thanks to the speed improvement, the departure rate of traffic started from search decreased by 20%
· In 2018, 200 million unique URLs were verified 1 billion times with PageSpeed Insights
Source: Overseas SEO Information Blog
Various efforts are required to speed up websites, but this time I would like to introduce "AMP", which is one method, and whether AMP conversion has changed.
* Since the number of samples is small, I hope you can see it as a reference only.
What is AMP
"AMP" is an abbreviation for "Accelerated Mobile Pages," which is a specification developed by Google and Twitter to "accelerate the site speed" to improve the mobile Internet experience. It is said that AMP pages are about 4 times faster than regular pages. Web pages that support AMP are also displayed on the Google mobile search result screen.
It is said that it does not affect the ranking on the search result page at all depending on whether the AMP page is included or not.
It also appears in several formats in Google search results. When displaying the ranking, a mark like a lightning bolt is attached as in the image above.
Mechanism and structure of AMP
The AMPed page is cached in Google etc., and when the user clicks the search result, the page is returned from the cache, so the display time will be faster. Also, since the HTML tags that can be used are limited, it is simple to make and the page capacity is suppressed.
Advantages and disadvantages of AMP
merit
User withdrawal due to page load wait can be reduced
It is also said that 53% of visitors leave if the mobile site takes more than 3 seconds to load.
If a carousel is displayed in the search results, it is easy to catch your eyes and you can expect access improvement
May affect search rankings in the future
At this stage, Google announced that it will not be reflected in the search ranking, but it is likely to be reflected in the future because it is a flow of mobile enhancement.
Demerit
There are design restrictions
There may be restrictions on the tags that can be used, so the design may not match the image
It takes time to develop and respond
Since the structure and specifications are different depending on the site, it will take some time for research and development such as how to handle it and how to set it.
After creating, you can check AMP with Google Search Console.
AMP performance
A little setting is necessary to measure the performance of AMP pages.
Since the cookie cannot be inherited, there was a problem that the user who originally visited the AMP page and the user who visited the non-AMP page could not be recognized as the same. (Improved in May 2017)
Reference: Best practices for measuring AMP pages with Google Analytics (updated 2017.11)
At High Velocity, I actually tried introducing AMP on some sites, but I can not make an accurate judgment because the settings of Analytics were not set properly, but at present it seems that it does not affect traffic growth so much.
The inflow of natural search has not increased so much
Comparing AMP pages with regular pages, AMP pages have a low bounce rate and some sites have slightly higher pages/sessions.
There are also some sites where nearly 40% of the PV of the entire site is an AMP page.
* Refer to here for analysis settings
Summary
It may not be necessary to deal with it because it is not effective for SEO at this stage, but in the present age when words such as “user experience”, “engagement”, and “sanitization” are shouted, user convenience I think that it is better to consider to improve the property. In the future, shouldn't it be done early considering the possibility of being related to SEO?
This site supports AMP. Our site construction package BaseStation supports AMP, so please feel free to contact us if you are interested.
if you have any doubts, Please let me know