Why Content Marketers Will Soon Become AMP Dependents

Eric Haskell Why Content Marketers Will Soon Become AMP Dependents Eric Haskell 70 10 1 5 70 10 1 5

Mobile search on Google is one of the largest dominating trends happening around the world today. But the problem of page abandonment is still a common issue, especially with content marketers and publishers.

Will Google’s newly rolled out AMP (Accelerated Mobile Page) carousel provide any better solution to the page load speed problem?

In this article, you will be learning more about that soon. But before we get there, here are a few things that you need to get properly acquainted with first.

The Importance of Google Search Engine for Content Marketers/Publishers

There is no doubt about the fact that Google is one of the top priority search engines that B2B or B2C businesses cannot do without. Why?

First of all, it is one of the most popular search engines. Looking straight into the search query behavior analytics, Google is reported to process an average of over 40,000 queries every second. That translates to over 1.2 trillion searches per year.

The numbers seem to keep growing every second and you can learn more about this from Internet Live Stats. However, for a quick understanding, take a look at the graphical map showing the search rate recorded throughout Google history.

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Secondly – Google is the fourth most popular app among users and is soon expected to surpass even Facebook. It is now a top priority app and is featured on almost 30 percent of all mobile phone home screens.

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The facts are enough to explain that no matter what strategies business marketers pick up, Google’s search engine is a platform that lies right at the center. It is like the connecting source that channelizes a search with the rest of the information sources out there. It is also a platform on which the social media marketing platforms will have to depend a lot on. It’s almost like a Google legacy prevailing in the World Wide Web but then, this is something that is impossible to refuse. So, as a content publisher, there is a lot to think about be it Google search bots or the Title character length. Google AMP might be new but, if content marketing is your forte, it’s time to consider how much the technology can help you out and to invest it.

Is it Time to Look Beyond Responsive or Multi-Screen Methodology?

Google’s AMP Carousel is very much part of the multi-screen methodology, but then, all these while it was all about creating a fast loading design-centered web page and sites. There was a time when the Responsive web design methodology was considered to be the ultimate solution and which causes the web page to automatically adapt to the type of device or screen resolution.

Speaking of multi-screen marketing, it is more like a storytelling strategy that aimed to keep the message unified while observing the strengths of each media.

The need to maintain the balance between the screen resolution, the methodology and user engagement led to the custom content production that focused on using minimum texts. Custom contents are okay and relevant for landing pages, PPC ads or even social media contents. However, this proved to be a challenge when trying to fit in all content types. Some of these challenges are –

  • Tablet screens and small mobile may fully display the section that can serve all the content at once.
  • Responsive designs limit the web page space. As a result of which, it does not leave any extra room for CTA links for webinars, case studies, videos, and e-books. This lack of space makes content promotion or showcase even more difficult.
  • The other factor is that responsive design can tend to be expensive and hence front-load costs. The multi-screen methodology will require too much cross-channel content strategy, which again may or may not turn out to be successful. At times, it can even become complicated and hence is not a sufficient solution when you take content marketing seriously.

The time has now come to look beyond Responsive and other multi-screen methodologies if you want to make the most of your content marketing.

How Will Google AMP Benefit the Content Publishing Sector?

Google AMP aims to cut down the total page load speed thus improving the overall responsiveness and functionalities of their mobile websites.

As you may know, page load speed is an important factor in terms of both conversion and ranking. This is now even truer after Google’s Mobilegeddon initiative to award web pages that provide mobile friendly user experience with better ranking. Speaking of user experience, longer page load times can have an adverse effect on a web page's conversion. So, if you have set up a blog page that serves as a conversion channel but which has a slow loading page speed, you could be losing a lot already. It’s time to consider having Accelerated Mobile Pages as your website’s content page framework for a faster web experience. It’s comparatively cheaper too, especially if your business has to rely a lot on content marketing strategies. This is an open source initiative by Google and is a revolutionary new way of converting the static web pages into dynamic and static ones.

The AMP is composed of Three Elements

  • AMP HTML
  • AMP JS
  • Google AMP Cache

The AMP HTML is the same HTML but comes with certain restrictions that ensure reliable performance. It, however, comes extended with custom AMP properties that work to build rich contents beyond just basic HTML. It is these custom AMP properties that make common properties easier to implement and in a performant way.

The AMP JS looks after the fast rendering of your page by implementing the best AMP performance practices, resource loading management, and custom tagging. One of the biggest optimization techniques is the fact that it asynchronies everything that is derived from external resources. This helps nothing in the page to block anything from rendering. Other special page performance enhancement techniques include – pre-calculation of every element layout prior to the loading of the resources, sandboxing of the iframes and disabling of the slow CSS selectors.

The Google AMP Cache is considered to be a proxy-based content delivery network that fetches the AMP HTML pages, caches them and then automatically improves the performance of the page. The cache also functions as built-in validation system that guarantees whether the page’s markup sheet meets the AMP HTML standard and whether the functionality of the page will work or not.

It is because of this, an AMP enables website page loads faster (four times) compared to a regular web page. The Accelerated Mobile Page is a time-tested open source system and is a good sign of connectivity especially for the content publishing sector. With Google AMP, a web page looks cleaner, easier and simplified on a mobile device and looks slicker on the desktop.

Contents are Not Just About Texts

Contents can be anything like animations, videos, and graphics too. It is these rich contents that often tend to load long. Everybody now wants these contents to load instantly and to work alongside smart ads. Google AMP comes as a single code that helps to make this happen and works to deliver content seamlessly across any platform (for example, devices like smartphone, mobile or tablets). The Google AMP stands out as a good example as to how new technology trends can help businesses around in terms of promotion, ranking, and conversion.

Content Marketing Benefits to be acquired from Google AMP Carousel

  • Production of Better and Richer Content

Social media plug-ins, image carousels, videos and data visualizations are some of the contributing factors that make content informative and rich. The open source approach and the technical specification of the AMP, allows publishers to rely on shared components that make the content production better and user interactive.

  • Efficient Distribution

Contents can gain greater exposure when distributed efficiently across all platforms and devices. AMP carousel enables efficient content distribution through the search engine giant's high-performance global cache. Google intends to open the cache servers so that it can be used free of charge.

  • Extensive Advertising

Google aims to provide businesses with a comprehensive range of ad networks, ad formats, and technologies. That means, web pages using AMP HTML would get to choose ad networks of their choice that does not detract from the user experience. According to Google, the core goal is to support ad subscriptions and paywalls that will help to fund businesses delivering content services.

AMP is growing and expanding. As a recent example, the open source framework has already reached 125 million documents and is expanding to recipe pages and apps.

How to Make Your Content AMP Adaptable

It is an exciting project and you can start adapting it as part of your business strategy by following these steps:

  1. Publish Two Content Versions

To make your content page lightweight, the technology strips away everything that is technically not important on the page. Try building two versions of the page – AMP enabled and non-AMP enabled.

In the AMP enabled version, things like JavaScript, comments and embeds will not appear on the page.

  1. Add Custom AMP-ing Elements to Images and Videos

Adding AMP-ing elements will change your multimedia. Add am-anim features to your GIFs and amp-ing elements to the images. You will also have to add amp-video tags that will lead to HTML 5 embedding.

  1. Alert Google about Your AMP Pages

Alert Google about your latest changes so that the search engine bots can speed up the indexing process. To do this, just add the tag – <link rel=”amphtml” href=http://www.webpagename.com/blog-post/amp/> to the original content.

Final Thoughts

Getting used to the project might take some time. However, Google’s AMP will have a huge impact on content marketing if marketers can take advantage of the three tips successfully.

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