AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages is an open source initiative by Google launched in October 2015.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are lightweight pages designed to load quickly on mobile devices. AMP-compliant pages use a subset of HTML with a few extensions.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), is a very accessible framework for creating fast-loading mobile web pages.

The AMP project aims at improving the performance of the mobile web. Further, the intent is that the webpages with rich content like video, animations and graphics  should  work alongside smart ads, and  load instantaneously.

Google also wants the AMP code to work across multiple platforms and devices so that content can appear everywhere in an instant—no matter what type of phone, tablet or mobile device the mobile user is  using.

The mobile users have increased phenomenally in number in the recent times. Hence, Users now consume content wherever they find it and the experience of  reading on the mobile may not be always a good one. Every time the webpage loads slowly on the smartphones that website/blog may lose a reader. This adversely affects the opportunity to earn revenue through advertising or subscriptions also for Google (Adwords) as well as the user (Adsense).

The first group of technology partners planning to integrate AMP HTML pages are :

• Twitter,
• Pinterest,
• WordPress.com,
• Chartbeat,
• Parse.ly,
• Adobe Analytics and
• LinkedIn

About The Technical Aspect of AMP:

AMP in action consists of three different parts:

• AMP HTML
• AMP JS
• Google AMP cache

AMP HTML

AMP HTML is a subset of HTML for authoring content pages such as news articles which helps improve UX by reducing the page load time.

Though most tags in an AMP HTML page are regular HTML tags, some HTML tags are replaced with AMP-specific tags. (as listed on https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-html-format.md#html-tags)

 

 

Tag	Status in AMP HTML
script	Prohibited unless the type is application/ld+json. (Other non-executable values may be added as needed.) Exception is the mandatory script tag to load the AMP runtime and the script tags to load extended components.
base	Prohibited
img	Replaced with amp-img.
video	Replaced with amp-video.
audio	Replaced with amp-audio.
iframe	Replaced with amp-iframe.
frame	Prohibited.
frameset	Prohibited.
object	Prohibited.
param	Prohibited.
applet	Prohibited.
embed	Prohibited.
form	Prohibited. Support coming in the future.
input elements	Prohibited. Includes input, textarea, select, option. Notably, the buttonelement is allowed.
button	Allowed.
style	Required style tags fo adjusting opacity. One additional style tag is allowed in head tag for the purpose of custom styling. This style tag must have the attribute amp-custom.
link	rel values registered on microformats.org are allowed.   stylesheet and other values likepreconnect, prerender and prefetch that have side effects in the browser are disallowed. There is a special case for fetching stylesheets from whitelisted font providers.
meta	The http-equiv attribute is banned. Otherwise allowed.
a	The href attribute value must not begin with javascript:. If set, the targetattribute value must be _blank. Otherwise allowed.
svg	Most SVG elements are allowed.

HTML tags can be used unchanged in AMP HTML. Certain tags have equivalent custom tags (such as <img> and <amp-img>) and other tags are outright prohibited:

AMP JS

To avoid the delay in page rendering AMP manages resource handling and asynchronous loading but third-party JavaScript is kept out of the critical path.

Detailed info on : https://www.ampproject.org/docs/get_started/technical_overview.html#allow-only-asynchronous-scripts

 

Google AMP Cache

The Google AMP Cache is a proxy-based content delivery network for delivering all valid AMP documents. It fetches AMP HTML pages, caches them, and improves page performance automatically.

The AMP HTML Code:

AMP Code Validation:

You can test the HTML AMP page as per the instructions on:

https://www.ampproject.org/docs/guides/validate.html

AMP And Search Presence:

Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) went  live in mobile search results in February 2016. Due to certain limitations and being still at the initial stage currently AMP is more relevant for Content Sites and not for ecommerce sites.

Page load time and speed are ranking factors and user experience has always been the pivotal factor. AMP pages hopefully, should get rewarded by Google on search results like the mobile-friendly pages.

AMP reports are added to Google Search Console and Google also displays AMP as top stories in carousel  for mobile SERPs.

AMP In Mobile SERPs

AMP Report In Search Console

                                                                                     

 The SEO Nuance:

If you have both AMP and non-AMP versions of your pages, include the following links:

• On any non-AMP page, reference the AMP version of the page to let Google and other platforms know about it:
  • <link rel="amphtml" href="https://www.example.com/url/to/amp-version.html" />
• On the AMP page, add the following text to reference its non-AMP canonical version:
  • <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/url/to/regular-html-version.html" />
• For standalone AMP pages (those that don't have a non-AMP version) the AMP page should specify itself as the canonical version:
  • <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/url/to/amp-document.html" />

Some Pros and Cons of the AMP Project:

Pros:

• AMP is open source.
• Page load time and speed being a ranking factor, it may have a SEO advantage.
• AMP articles appear in the carousel spot in mobile SERPs.
• Increase in readership due to UX.
• There is a WordPress plugin for AMP. https://wordpress.org/plugins/amp/
• You can implement analytics to measure activity on AMP document. (https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/extended/amp-analytics.html)
• Google had added the AMP Report in Search Console too.

Cons:

• You cannot have forms for AMP Content.
• AMP cannot be enabled for non-publisher sites and ecommerce sites.
• Third-party JavaScript cannot be used.
• Only WordPress plugin available but other CMS plugins are yet to go live hence implanting AMP can be complicated if you are not a developer and do not use WordPress.

The Future Goal :

The main goal of the AMP project in the coming future is to build more features and functionality focused on:

• Content
• Distribution
• Advertising

Google says:

Webpages built with AMP load on an average of four times faster and use 10 times less data than equivalent non-AMP pages. In many cases, they’ll load instantly. It’s how reading on the mobile web should be—fast, responsive and fun.

AMP Project - A Win-Win Project by Google, for Google And Users

With the mobile web expanding exponentially, the mobile ad blocking  also showing an increasing trend. Users do not want to have degraded data experience due to page-load speed issues  or low quality  ads.

The AMP initiative by Google is surely a win-win one as it not only has a focus on improving the user experience but also helps in safe guarding Google’s interest of displaying ads. seamlessly.

I think its major impact will be felt when AMP will be extended to ecommerce sites as well because the 2015 total retail sales reveal that eCommerce sales continue to grow at a rapid pace, growing 14.6 percent year over year in 2015 to a grand total of $341.7 billion.

A BI Intelligence report states that by 2020, mobile commerce will make up 45 percent of total e-commerce, equaling $284 billion in sales. That’s more than three times what’s expected for 2016: BI Intelligence predicts mobile commerce will hit 20.6 percent of overall e-commerce, or $79 billion.

Following are the retailers (from 1 to 10), total digital unique monthly visitors (in millions) in January 2015, and the percentage of total visitors that only shop the retailers on smartphones and/or tablets, according to comScore:

The impact of mobile is huge. Ask these 2 questions to yourself.

• Is your site mobile-friendly?
• Have you enabled AMP for your publisher site?

If your answer to the above two questions is "NO" then we would love to help you.

Related Posts:

• RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN OR A MOBILE APP – HOW TO DECIDE?
• WHAT IS RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN AND WHY WE SHOULD OPT FOR IT?

Google yesterday published a post on  how they fought spam on the webmaster blog. Google mentioned, we fight spam through a combination of algorithms and manual reviews to ensure that sites don’t rise in search results through deceptive or manipulative behavior, especially because those sites could harm or mislead users.

Some important web spam insights Google gathered in 2015:

• Huge no. of websites being hacked. 180% increase compared to the previous year.
• Increase in the no. of  websites having thin or low quality content.

Actions taken by Google:

• One of the algorithmic updates helped to remove the amount of hacked spam in search results.
• Google sent more than 4.3 million messages to webmasters to notify them of manual actions they took on their site and to help them identify the issues.
• There was a 33% increase in the number of sites that went through spam clean-up efforts towards a successful reconsideration process.
• Users submitted more than 4,00,000 spam reports to Google. Google acted on 65% of them, and considered 80% of those acted upon to be spam.
• Google conducted more than 200 online office hours and live events around the world in 17 languages.
• Webmasters had tens of thousands of questions answered, including over 35,000 by users designated as Webmaster Top Contributors.  webmaster help forum continued to be an excellent source of webmaster support.
• Google believes, fighting web spam is one of the many ways they can  maintain search quality at Google and Google thanked all those who  submitted reports and contributed towards a cleaner web ecosystem!

The successful story you see or read online is the result of efforts made on the basis of the analysis. Writers, online marketers, SEO (Search Engine Optimizations) Professionals keep a close eye on various metrics to come out the strategy boosting their ranking and views.

Content Writers, content marketers who are running their own blogs or writing for their employers need to have an update check of these metrics. Here are the most common metrics every content writer should track to make a good online marketing strategy.

Before opening the list, let us tell you that different metrics work in a different manner. Some are better reviews weekly, some are best reviews monthly. And, before everything, you must know what are you targeting and which metrics you should track.

1. Number of views on the Post

Post Views are a great way to get a feedback on your uploaded articles. If you picked a hot and trending topic, which is well written and presented then you are likely to get more views on it. If the views are not much even after all the efforts, then consider it has not acceptable by your audience. But, the story doesn’t end there.

 

2. Number of Search Visitors

These are the visitors who search something particular on Google and ended up viewing your blog. This result directly points towards whether you are writing a trending topic (that people are searching) or not. Keeping track of the keywords related to the topic is always a good idea to write searchable content. By inserting focusing keywords in your content, you are bridging the gap between your content and your target audience. Following this after a couple of dozen of posts, you will know that you are better writing on which topics. You can then focus on your niches better.

3. Backlinks

Backlink traffic is the measure of activity going to your pages from external websites. Backlinks, particularly from respectable blogs and websites, are the affirmation that your content has the valuable potential. Backlinking activity builds your exposure and scope, and chances to convert. They hold a viable opportunity to get a new business. A business mind takes full advantage of such opportunities

Backlinks are a crucial factor for Google ranking.

If you have a Google analytics account then you can check backlink or referral activity on your blog via Acquisition -> Overview -> Referral

 

4. Average Time Spent on Page by the visitors

In the point under Post Views, we wrote, ‘but the story doesn’t there’. It is because view count is nothing if your viewer is staying just for seconds on your page. If it is a well-written content then they must read it and the view time must be at least a couple of minutes. That’s where average time spent on your page by the viewers matter. By knowing the average time spent by the viewers on your page, you can know whether the viewers are reading your content or just visiting the page and bouncing out of the page quickly. You need to tune up your content if the average time is less. Blog pages that have better average time mean people are reading that content. Try to tune up your other pages the same way to increase the average time.

 

5. Bounce Rate

More the average time, lesser the bounce rate or more the bounce rate lesser the average time!

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who navigate away after viewing only single page of your website or blog. If the bounce rate is high that means people/visitors are just coming in and going out of the page doing nothing. It is either they are not reading the content or they do not like it and after reading only one or two lines they are leaving the page. Both the cases indicate that you need to improve your content’s quality. Follow various SEO strategies as per the content creation. Increase the reader-friendliness of the page. Don’t overload it with advertisements and links.

 

6. Social Media Reach

Take advantage of what is available for free online and social media marketing is one of them. Posting on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, Google+ money wise is free. It only takes a few minutes to write and post on these channels about your content. You can get an adequate amount of traffic from these channels. Keep track of traffic from these channels is very helpful. Channel from where you are getting more traffics post your content frequently on that. You can develop a genuine fan base from these channels who would actually read your content when you post about it on them. You can even engage with them and have a healthy conversation that would help you build strong relationships with your fans and followers.

 

7. Number of Returning Visitors

Observing returning visitors can let you know how captivating your content is and can go about as a rule for content creation for the future. Returning visitors are the ones on which you don’t have to spend your time and money for marketing.

Realizing that the visitor returned, regardless of the possibility that they didn't convert, implies that your content is drawing enough attention to keep them returning and may even imply that your no conversion could be because of something else.

 

8. Monthly Target

After reviewing your week’s performance you should set your monthly target of visitors, returning page visitors, social media reach, and average time spent on page, and the bounce rate. Set a monthly goal and work hard to achieve it in a month. This will motivate you on every step. Try some experiments and see the changes in the result.

And, we are done with our list. These metrics options would be good to give you a head start in content marketing. And, you will learn more as you move forward in this line of work. Make it a habit of not missing any of these metrics.

 

Last year two important major announcements made by Google in February 2015 blog post were:

• Starting April 21 2015, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal, meaning more mobile-friendly sites in search results.
• We will begin to use information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed

Focusing on the point that Getting good, relevant answers when you search shouldn’t depend on what device you’re using, Google has announced that,  “Beginning of May 2016, we’ll start rolling out an update to mobile search results that increases the effect of the ranking signal to help our users find even more pages that are relevant and mobile-friendly.”

Google recommends checking out the Mobile-Friendly Test and the Webmaster Mobile Guide, both of which provide guidance on how to improve your mobile site.

If you've already made your site mobile-friendly, you will not be impacted by this update. The blog post also mentions that the intent of the search query is still a very strong signal and if the content of the page is very superior and in-depth related to the search query then a page which is not mobile-friendly, may rank in the search results.

With online marketing becoming the norm for all businesses today, Google on the webmasters blog has published a few guidelines on how the businesses can safeguard their websites when reviewing free products they receive from companies.

Google says, Whether you are the company supplying the product or the blogger writing the post, below are a few best practices to ensure that this content is both useful to users and compliant with Google Webmaster Guidelines.

3 points Google mentions on the blog are:

1.  Use the nofollow tag where appropriate.
2.  Disclose the relationship.
3.  Create compelling, unique content.

The nofollow tag should be used because the link that is given in such a review is not an organic one. This review is written because the free product was received. Hence it does not fall in the category of the earned links or genuine links.

Secondly, Users want to know when they’re viewing sponsored content. Also, there are laws in some countries that make disclosure of sponsorship mandatory.

Lastly, Google says, Creating compelling and informative content is something which will add value to the whole post/review. As the write-up should give a lot of information about the product, but should also weigh its pros and cons.

The review should help the user to get a correct idea about the product and help him/her to take a decision. This will also offer a compelling reason for the users to come back for more such reviews.

This kind of an approach will in the long run benefit the user, the blogger and also the company who has offered the free product.