amp: do or die? #smxeast

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AMP: DO OR DIE?

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I’m Aleyda Solis

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I help companies to connect with them

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Some of them brands you likely know

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Having a fast mobile Website is one of the fundamental aspects to achieve this goal

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To avoid making users to leave the site

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Killing conversions

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Which will be even more critical with Google’s upcoming mobile first index too

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Users have minimum expectations

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But this is our speed reality

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Yup

https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/

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The solution is to implement WPO principles to make Mobile sites to load fast

https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/rules

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But big sites have restrictive legacy platforms & small ones little resources to improve them

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That’s why Google launched AMP

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It uses a “simplified” HTML version with optimised resources & cache to serve faster in Mobile SERPs

https://www.ampproject.org/learn/overview/

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AMP is published “parallely” and canonicalized to your current (slower) Mobile Web pages

http://www.businessinsider.com/game-of-thrones-gendry-olympian-running-meme-2017-8

https://amp.businessinsider.com/game-of-thrones-gendry-olympian-running-meme-2017-8

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It’s also cached and pre-rendered by Google when shown in Mobile SERPs

Google AMP Viewer URLthat is pre-rendered

Canonical URL of the Page

Content served from AMP Cache URL

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http://www.businessinsider.com/game-of-thrones-gendry-olympian-running-meme-2017-8

https://amp.businessinsider.com/game-of-thrones-gendry-olympian-running-meme-2017-8

Making it certainly much faster

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AMP usage is not a ranking factor

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But Google made it a requirement to be included in the News Carrousel

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and can be also shown in organic results

AMP article rich resultsCan be free-standing in the results page, or embedded in a carousel of

similar result types. All AMP article rich results are also rich results.

AMP non-rich resultsA basic, non-graphical search result

pointing to the AMP page.

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Which has given it an impressive SERP visibility

https://www.rankranger.com/amp-on-google-serp

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As well as traffic to the sites using itAMP Rich Results

AMP Non-Rich Results

Non-AMP Results

More Mobile organic visibility and traffic from

AMP than non-AMP results

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This has incentivized its adoption, especially among big media oriented sites

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However, AMP is not a replacement of your Mobile site

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Even Google representatives agree that is not a “bullet-proof” solution for all sites

“It wouldn’t be reasonable for us to expect that a group of limited functionalities replace all what you can do at the moment in the mobile environment…AMP its meant to serve in certain use cases”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtOjUwGnrVY

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AMP is a fast “add-on” to your already existing (but still slow) mobile Web presence

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But due to the way it is presented and its expansion efforts it might look like it

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That’s why there are reservations about it: “AMP has a good intentions… but sacrifice the open Web”

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You shouldn’t then use AMP as a silver bullet Mobile speed solution but a resource in case you can benefit from it

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And avoid situations like this

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So, for those of you who can’t improve your own mobile speed or

are media sites that could profit from the extra visibility…

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Here are some AMP implementation do’s & don’ts to maximise your success

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Start by verifying if you can Implement your current Mobile Web UI & functionality with AMP

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You want to avoid this

ORIGINAL MOBILE PAGE AMP URL VERSION

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Validate that your mobile Web functionality can be replicated by using AMP components

https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components

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Check with your development team if you have the capacity and flexibility to use them

https://ampbyexample.com/

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#SMX #14A @aleyda#ampsuccess at #brightonseo by @aleyda from @orainti

You can even test while validating your code directly in the AMP Playground editor

https://ampbyexample.com/playground/

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Plan ahead using the roadmap with a reference of the functionalities to come

#ampsuccess at #brightonseo by @aleyda from @orainti

https://www.ampproject.org/roadmap/

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There are also free Wordpress plugins that highly facilitate the implementation

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You can also use freemium and paid WP plugins like AMP for WP and weeblrAMP

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They will allow you to personalise more, but you’ll likely need further development support

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They’re not an “out of the box” solution and will still need design personalisation

ORIGINAL MOBILE PAGE AMP URL VERSION

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The goal should be to keep the UI andfunctionality consistent, like Gizmodo does

ORIGINAL MOBILE PAGE AMP URL VERSION

=

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Check your AMP visibility potential to prioritise your

implementation accordingly

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Verify the share and type of queries for which AMP results are shown in your industry

https://www.sistrix.com/

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Identify which of them are shown along SERP features to prioritise and format your content

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Like this

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Once you launch, follow-up w/ your own AMP results via the Google Search Console

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Verify the top queries per AMP URL to identify further AMP content opportunities

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Be mindful of Search Console false positives though

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Use SEOmonitor to track AMP for your targeted (ranked or unranked) keywords

https://www.seomonitor.com/

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You can also spot AMP opportunities vs. your competitors with SEMrush rank tracking

#ampsuccess at #brightonseo by @aleyda from @orainti

https://www.semrush.com

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rankranger.com

Do the same with your News Carrousel AMP rankings by using RankRanger

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Validate your AMP implementation before and after launch with SEO crawlers to minimise issues

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+70% of top publishers with AMP across 8 countries (including the US) have implementation errors

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Most common AMP mistakes are related to usage of disallowed and non-supported attributes & tags

https://www.semrush.com/blog/amp-mistakes-semrush-study/

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Avoid them by using the AMP validator Chrome extension to go through your main pages

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/amp-validator/nmoffdblmcmgeicmolmhobpoocbbmknc

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Crawl all of your site pages to validate AMP implementation issues before and after launching

https://sitebulb.com/

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SEO crawlers like Sitebulb, Deepcrawl & SEMrushalready include AMP configuration problems

deepcrawl.com

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You’ll be able to obtain and fix quickly those that would generate critical issues in the Search Console

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https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/log-file-analyser/

Validate if possible in your logs if Googlebot’s crawling behavior of your AMP URLs is consistent

19 OF THE 20 CRAWLED URLs ARE AMP

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Monitor your AMP implementation with the GSC AMP report, where you should focus on fixing critical issues first

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It’s usual to be overwhelmed by the increase of AMP issues when launching or updating

SIGH

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Prioritise to fix critical issues first, which will be the ones preventing to be shown in SERPs

THIS

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Start with those affecting the highest number of pages and check them directly there

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Focus on identifying how the non-supported code is included to establish a pattern and remove it

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YES

Rinse and repeat until you minimise critical errors

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Avoid linking to your AMP URLs unless you don’t have a Mobile friendly site or the one you have has serious speed issues

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There’s an inconsistent mobile user experience when accessing to AMP pages from SERPs

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Which ends-up causing that users link and share the non-canonical Google AMP Viewer URLs

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Start avoiding these by making sure to only link internally to your canonical URLs from AMP

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You can also refer your users to your original Website version to continue browsing your site

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Remember to also redirect based on the user agent to avoid showing non-mobile visitors your AMP URLs

DON’T DO THIS DO THIS

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As you can see, it’s not about doing or dying, but about benefiting from AMP in case you need it and configuring it to maximize success

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Now is your turn

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Thanks

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