Why Google Cares If Your Business Has Online Reviews – And Why You Should Too
A business’s visibility on Google can make or break its success, but what if one simple factor, like online reviews,
How the AMP Update Changes Search Engine Optimization
It’s coming on two years since the AMP update came into play, and it is finally beginning to live up to it’s potential. The ingenuity of developers, marketers, and business owners has come through once again, this time in a fast-paced and powerful medium. Now is the time for businesses to take advantage of the ground they can gain on their competitors by investing in AMP HTML coded pages.
What is the AMP Update?
The AMP Update is an initiative led by Google that aims to improve mobile user experience. The goal is to strip webpages down to the bare bones, allowing them to load in a fraction of a second. These AMP-coded pages are perfect for mobile, which has a much more impatient and insistent need for a swift response than desktop search. This is classic Google – changing their system dramatically to improve their user experience – regardless of the reactions of advertisers. Now when you make a mobile search on your phone, you’ll see a small carousel of sites with a small lightning bolt image indicating the AMP status. These sites are instant-load sites, popping up four times faster and using eight times less data than a regularly mobile-optimized site. Obviously, that’s changed the Search Engine Optimization landscape a bit.
What is the Overall Impact on Search Engine Optimization Right Now?
Some people disregard AMP because it doesn’t actually have a direct impact on Search Engine Optimization ranking factors. It’s true. AMP does currently have any means to directly influence Search Engine Optimization ranking. Google has been careful to state that AMP is not a ranking factor (yet). But that’s only technically the case because that doesn’t mean that it has no indirect power to change page rankings. Which it does. AMP-coding a webpage offers a significant benefit to Search Engine Optimization rankings. Page load speed and mobile-friendliness are both key elements of good Search Engine Optimization that are also both boosted by AMP-coding. That means that yes, though the AMP update doesn’t have the distinction of being a ranking factor, it can nonetheless be a huge Search Engine Optimization boon to the right business.
AMP in 2016:
As speedy and spectacular as AMP-coded pages are, they’re not for everyone or every situation. If you want your webpage to generate leads, it can’t be an AMP page, because they won’t support a form. If you don’t have a professionally built website with no HTML errors, you can’t have AMP pages. But if you have a blog, an informational site, an online magazine, anything that you have built aiming to educate or inform your customers – your Search Engine Optimization may benefit from AMP-coding those pages.
AMP in 2017:
AMP is still not a stated ranking factor for Google’s Search Engine Optimization, but it has gotten much more flexible and important. Advances by eBay in the summer, namely the launch of 8 million AMP HTML product pages, pushed the AMP coding from only for long-form content like news to a whole new type of website. Other business sites (both local and e-commerce) followed later, proving that the publishers-only stigma of AMP has been thoroughly broken. Businesses at all levels can now take advantage of AMP-coding some of their product pages or other such resources.
Click to Tweet: The speed and mobile friendliness factors AMP pages offer will boost a business’ Search Engine Optimization as these Google preferred pages will be prioritized in their search algorithms.
We expect that soon Google will announce AMP- coded pages will be a ranking factor for Search Engine Optimization.
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