Why Implement AMPHTML alongside SEO Practice is the Best
Accelerate Mobile Page (AMP)offers a dynamic and effective way to improve Web page speed, users experience and business core metrics. The AMP pages instant loading enable and offers a consistency fast experience across devices and platforms connected to AMP pages. Therefore, these performances improve matters such as return visits, Clicks Through rate (CTRs) and time spent on page. It’s compatible across browsers and supported by many different platforms
AMP’s ecosystem includes 25 million domains, 100+ technology providers, and leading platforms, that span the areas of publishing, advertising, e-commerce, local and small businesses, and more!
3 core components to build AMP:
AMP HTML
AMP HTML is HTML with some restrictions for reliable performance.
AMP HTML is basically HTML extended with custom AMP properties. The simplest AMP HTML file looks like this:
<!doctype html><html ⚡> <head> <meta charset=”utf-8″> <link rel=”canonical” href=”hello-world.html”> <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width,minimum-scale=1,initial-scale=1″> <style amp-boilerplate>body{-webkit-animation:-amp-start 8s steps(1,end) 0s 1 normal both;-moz-animation:-amp-start 8s steps(1,end) 0s 1 normal both;-ms-animation:-amp-start 8s steps(1,end) 0s 1 normal both;animation:-amp-start 8s steps(1,end) 0s 1 normal both}@-webkit-keyframes -amp-start{from{visibility:hidden}to{visibility:visible}}@-moz-keyframes -amp-start{from{visibility:hidden}to{visibility:visible}}@-ms-keyframes -amp-start{from{visibility:hidden}to{visibility:visible}}@-o-keyframes -amp-start{from{visibility:hidden}to{visibility:visible}}@keyframes -amp-start{from{visibility:hidden}to{visibility:visible}}</style><noscript><style amp-boilerplate>body{-webkit-animation:none;-moz-animation:none;-ms-animation:none;animation:none}</style></noscript> <script async src=”https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js”></script> </head> <body>Hello World!</body></html>
Though most tags in an AMP HTML page are regular HTML tags, some HTML tags are replaced with AMP-specific tags (see also HTML Tags in the AMP spec). These custom elements, called AMP HTML components, make common patterns easy to implement in a performant way.
For example, the amp-img tag provides full srcset support even in browsers that don’t support it yet.
AMP pages are discovered by search engines and other platforms through the <link rel=””> HTML tag. You can choose to have a non-AMP version and an AMP version of your page, or just an AMP version. Learn more in Make Your Page Discoverable.
AMP JS
The AMP JS library ensures the fast rendering of AMP HTML pages.
The AMP JS library implements all of AMP’s best performance practices manages resource loading and gives you the custom tags mentioned above, all to ensure a fast rendering of your page.
AMP Cache
The Google AMP Cache can be used to serve cached AMP HTML pages.
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. When using the Google AMP Cache, the document, all JS files, and all images load from the same origin that is using HTTP 2.0 for maximum efficiency.
The cache also comes with a built-in validation system which confirms that the page is guaranteed to work and that it doesn’t depend on external resources. The validation system runs a series of assertions confirming the page’s markup meets the AMP HTML specification.
Another version of the validator comes bundled with every AMP page. This version can log validation errors directly to the browser’s console when the page is rendered, allowing you to see how complex changes in your code might impact performance and user experience.
Among the biggest optimizations is the fact that it makes everything that comes from external resources asynchronous, so nothing on the page can block anything from rendering.
Other performance techniques include the sandboxing of all iframes, the pre-calculation of the layout of every element on the page before resources are loaded and the disabling of slow CSS selectors.
The performance benefits and security guarantees offered by AMPHTML ads, which are display ads created using the AMP framework, translate to better advertiser ROI, publisher revenue and overall better user experience. Because of this, Google has expanded serving AMPHTML ads not only to AMP pages but also to regular web pages. As of January this year, 12% of all display ads served by Google are now AMPHTML ads.
All of the code in the AMP repository is open source which is carefully reviewed by the project maintainers before being merged. As a result, ads written in AMP start performant and stay performant. Such a process also drastically reduces the likelihood of AMPHTML ads having code that takes advantage of chipset level vulnerabilities or drain CPU by crypto-mining from users’ devices.
Since AMPHTML ads can be trusted, they can be rendered into a more performant same-origin iframe. This performance boost results in the ad rendering faster on the page which translates to higher publisher revenue and better advertiser ROI.
Experiment results from GPT.js rendering AMPHTML ads in a same-origin vs cross-origin iframe
AMPHTML ads on AMP pages deliver even better ROI
An AMPHTML ad delivered to an AMP page has better performance compared to the same ad running on a regular web page. This is due to the inherent design of AMPHTML ads outlined here, giving advertisers better click-through rates and viewability.
AMP pages have seen steady growth over the past few years and advertisers now have access to well over 1 billion impressions/day worth of premium (from a user experience & ad experience standpoint) inventory. In addition, more than 35 percent of ads served to AMP pages are already AMPHTML ads.
Publishers and Advertisers seeing success with AMP pages and AMPHTML ads
The news publisher EL PAIS partnered with Volkswagen, one of their advertisers, to run a multivariate A/B test measuring how Volkswagen’s display ads created in AMPHTML vs HTML5 would perform on AMP vs regular pages.
Simply moving from a standard HTML page to an AMP page (with the same HTML5 ad) resulted in a 26 percent CTR increase. Moving further to an AMP page with AMPHTML ads resulted in an additional 48 percent CTR increase.
Increase in performance metrics when combining AMP pages with AMPHTML ads
Getting started with AMPHTML ads for advertisers
AMPHTML ads are a subset of the AMP spec and ships with many good-by-default ads UI components, an analytics measurement framework, a spam detection system, viewability measurement, and other building blocks to create a good and measurable ad.
We encourage you to read more about the benefits of using AMPHTML ads, but if you want to jump ahead to start creating them, this is a good place to begin.
Once you have created the ad, you can choose one of the following options to serve AMPHTML ads:
- Work with an Authorized Buyer that allows targeting just AMP or regular inventory
- Use Google Ads to target inventory in the Google Display Network
- Direct buy with publishers using Google Ad Manager
- [Coming Soon] Display & Video 360 support to deliver AMPHTML ads to AMP pages
Google continues to invest in delivering better user ad experiences by increasing the share of AMPHTML ads vs regular ads. Once mobile app support launches in Q2, 2019, advertisers can fully transition to creating a single AMPHTML ad and have it render across all environments and devices.
We hope you’ll take full advantage of the performance, security benefits, and the increased ROI by choosing to build & serve AMPHTML ads in your next campaign.
