Why It’s Google AMP And Page Experience Together

There are benefits to using Google’s AMP. However, it doesn’t work for every site. For some, the sacrifices are too great.

Plus, while Google says it’s still committed to AMP (accelerated mobile pages), the new ‘Page Experience’ algorithm seems a better bet for optimising your site. So will AMP soon become redundant for all sites, even those that are getting great results?

Let’s find out, starting with why AMP matters to some sites.

Statista reports more than half of all global web traffic is now mobile, and it’s been like this since 2019. Therefore, AMP delivers fast page speed with more users using their mobile devices when they go online for sites with lots of content.

A Fine Balance

However, page speed is not your only concern. If it was, then every site would be using AMP. Now there are Google’s Page Experience signals too. Plus, what about UX (User Experience)? It’s a delicate balance, delivering it all, and all site owners need to keep in mind how to find the right balance of fast page speed vs user experience  UX and meeting all the other SEO metrics.

BusinessBlogs is also keen to use the right SEO strategy while providing a meaningful user experience. The more we learn, the more we want to know, too, so in this business blog post, we look at AMP and link to a few reference sources that present as authorities on the topic of AMP and Google Page Experience.

AMP Explained

Who better to explain what AMP is than its creator – Google! Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) has been around for many years. Its goal is to load web pages faster and achieve it, AMP needs to use less HTML and Javascript, and by doing this, Google caches the content it serves.

AMP is open source, so it’s available to be served on various browsers, platforms that differ from its competitor, Facebook Instant Articles, proprietary software.

Where AMP works well

AMP is great for high volume content publishers.

Articles are text-based, and AMP uses minimal HTML, CSS, and Javascript, fast-loading article pages.

Where AMP is best avoided

However, AMP is probably not the right choice if your site has few articles and it’s more image-based, i.e. mostly brochureware or an eCommerce site.

Remember using AMP comes back to your goals. For example, if you are a blogger publishing lots of wordy articles – AMP will load the main content for your users quickly. However, suppose your site is about delivering outstanding design and high-quality imagery as this generates sales. In that case, AMP will degrade your user experience, likely to result in a higher bounce rate and thus lower sales.

Is AMP popular?

According to this source, 1.8 million sites are using AMP. It’s been around for more than five years, and once a website has AMP installed, there has to be convincing evidence to support removing it.

Is AMP still relevant?

Google’s latest Page Experience algorithm update is said to be a threat to AMP. Notably, the first sign will decline in new sites installing AMP as the focus switches to Core Web Vitals and Page Experience.

Google Page Experience

How scary is Google Page Experience? Very, if you don’t do your homework. There is plenty of updates from Google, including this page on the developers’ site, which lets you know how it may impact your page rank. Plus, you can learn of Google’s improvement updates.

With the update now rolled out, how is it affecting your site?

If you are using AMP, keep with it as the word is out that Google values it highly for keeping FID (First Input Delay) low, which is one of the core web vitals.

Reassurance from Google – AMP is alive and well

See here for a reassuring update from Google that they are still investing in AMP. Phew! We use it, albeit not as well as we could be, but that’s about to change.

What’s essential for sites using AMP is Google values it, and therefore so should you.

However, it alone doesn’t let you off the hook with working on all the page experience signals – which says Google from the link above include:

• Core Web Vitals (LCP – Largest Contentful Paint), FID (First Input Delay), CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)
• Mobile Friendliness
• HTTPS
• Non-Intrusive Interstitials – e.g. too many popups making it hard for the user to get to the content

Summing Up

If you’re a blogger or publish lots of article type content and you’ve got AMP, it’s still valuable to you as it will assist with Google’s Page Experience signals.  However, it could be holding them back from delivering a more profound user experience for other types of sites.

New sites may not value AMP and instead direct their time and budget to other SEO optimisation strategies.

If SEO is new to you start with this article on Google’s free tools for SEO and marketing.