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How AMP Helps Your Page Rankings
You may remember back in 2015, Google introduced their controversial AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) framework. AMP was introduced to deal with, at the time, growing problems of slow loading on mobile.
So why the controversy? While AMP cut down the load time of article pages on mobile, it also essentially tried to change the way that the web is built. It is interesting then that Google has decided that AMP is no longer required for inclusion in the Top Stories carousel, and a recent article on Search Engine Land suggests that it may lead to many publishers abandoning the format. The data however shows that AMP pages perform much better, boosting rankings and revenue when compared to non-AMP pages.
It seems as though Google has moved more towards the page experience taking over mobile ranking, but before you ditch AMP, it is important to know and understand what you might be losing.
Improvements in Speed Loading Time Increase Traffic and Click Through Rate
We know that the quicker pages load, the less people will back away from your website. A June study from Deloitte found that even small increases in the speed of a website led to an increase in page views, engagement, and conversion. This then led to an increase in brand loyalty and revenue. 
Another study conducted by Perficient Digital, and mentioned in the Search Engine Land article found some rather interesting figures when using AMP-enabled sites, including:
- 27.1% increase in organic traffic
- 33.8% increase in SERP (search engine results page) impressions
- 15.3% higher SERP click-through rates
It is important to ask yourself before you give away AMP as to whether you can really afford to lose those figures.
When You Should Drop AMP
AMP is really useful for those websites that are ad heavy, slow to load or publish news/are new orientated. If your website is already quick to load on mobile (your web developer should be able to assist here), you don’t publish news or you aren’t news orientated, you may find that having AMP or not, doesn’t really change much for you.
Hosting site Kinsta ran their own test of AMP and found that their results actually dropped when they installed it. Of course, this may only be relevant for them as their website is already relatively quick to load, but they do also mention that there are no SEO benefits from AMP unless you are a new orientated site trying to get into the carousel in SERP’s. So while you may use content, if you are using it to generate leads or sign up customers, you may find that AMP has no real value for you.
Is AMP Helping You?
While it is true that Accelerated Mobile Pages help a lot of businesses, it is important that you run some testing to find out if AMP is really helping your website as well as your conversion and click through rate. If you don’t currently have AMP installed on your website, your web developer will be able to assist in installing and then running some reports on your web traffic and Google Analytics after about 2 – 3 weeks. Similarly if you already have AMP installed, you may wish to consider disabling it for a short period of time to see what happens with your stats.
For some websites, particularly for those who as we mentioned are news heavy or ad heavy and slow to load, you may not want to ditch AMP yet because there are still plenty of benefits. If your mobile website is quick to load and you aren’t publishing news articles to get into the news carousel.
If you aren’t too sure if AMP is right for you or whether you should keep using it, make a time to speak with the FrogOnline team. We can assess your web traffic stats and look at how to increase your digital marketing to those accessing your website from a mobile.
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