Whatever the scope, size, and nature of your business, there’s a good chance that you have your share of competitors. No matter how superior your products or services, they will never stop snapping at your heels. And in a market where consumers are increasingly more fickle and time conscious, positioning yourself above the competition in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) is more important than ever.
If a competitor is ahead of you in SERPs, a prospective customer will most likely choose them over you, regardless of how superior your business may be.
That’s undoubtedly why businesses, large and small, invest so heavily in SEO; leveraging all that they can to position themselves above the competition. In an age where most users take to their smartphones rather than desktop computers to sate their immediate need for information, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) could prove highly advantageous for your operation’s SEO.
AMPs have a “Fast” label designation SERPs and can prove advantageous in rankings. Since search engines are known to value fast and responsive web pages, embracing AMPs could provide you with just the boost your SEO strategy needs. But what is AMP really? And why is it so beneficial? Get ready as we dive deep into this exciting and potentially beneficial new development.
What is AMP?
Accelerated Mobile Pages is a new standard of open-source coding standard for publishers. It’s designed to overcome traditional problems encountered when making web pages mobile responsive. The aim for AMP is for publishers to be able to load their sites quickly on mobile devices.
This has often proven problematic because desktop resources are heavy and plentiful, yet mostly unnecessary for mobile browsing. As we all know, long page loads are synonymous with high bounce rates; and high bounce rates are not looked upon favorably by search engine crawlers.
Until recently, AMP was just a UX measure. However, now that Google has backed it up and begun encouraging websites to adopt it, it’s becoming an increasingly widespread SEO tool.
Why is AMP so important?
One of the main reasons why AMP is fast becoming one of the hottest commodities in SEO is because the future is undoubtedly mobile. Since late 2016, mobile use has exceeded desktop use as the primary means by which most people access the internet.
A website that looks and operates beautifully on a desktop device can be a slow, unreliable and unresponsive mess on a mobile device, especially if it’s loaded over an unreliable 3G network.
AMP, however, provides web developers with a means of overcoming the limitations that come with unreliable mobile internet. Standardizing a mobile version of your site with AMP will make your website faster and more reliable for mobile users. And that can only be a good thing for your brand!
Let’s take a look at some of the ways in which AMP can benefit your website SEO…
Speed
Let’s get obvious out of the way. The chief benefit of AMP is speed. Faster websites aren’t just valued by search engine crawlers. They’re much more valued by users. In an age where people access the internet in short bursts while on the go, long page load times can lead to agitation from busy users. In fact, a page load time of just 5 seconds can increase your bounce rate by as much as 90%.
Prevents bottlenecking from server performance
It can be very frustrating when no matter what you do to improve website performance on the back end, your server’s limitations bottleneck the performance of your website. AMP, however, can reduce the strain on your servers for consistently fast performance.
Get the most out of Google
Did you know that there are spaces on Google’s SERPs that are reserved for AMP only pages? This can give you a serious advantage, especially if you are a blogger or news outlet. Using AMP to deliver your editorial copy grants you access to the carousel of news stories that sits atop the Google mobile search results.
Get the “lightning” icon in SERPs
Users trust Google. When they see the “lightning” icon next to your website’s entry in a SERP, they will know that Google deems it a fast and responsive page. This could drastically improve your click-through rates.
Potentially improve conversion rates
Users need to trust your website if they are going to convert and become customers. If your website uses e-commerce, AMP can also potentially improve conversion rates. After all, over 50% of mobile visitors leave an e-commerce page when it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Improving conversion rates will make search engines pay more attention to your website.
As we can see, in a mobile age, AMP can make all the difference when it comes to giving your SEO the inside track! Learn more on how AMP and SEO can benefit your business and website by visiting https://www.wsiprovenresults.com.
Kim Marks 
Nicola Holder