In today’s digital age, having an up-to-date and innovative data team is more important than ever in order to maximize exposure of your company and connect potential clients and customers to your products and services. A large part of marketing and promotion online are your Search Engine Optimization efforts, alone with the tracking and usage of data on your brand and company in order to promote traffic to your webpages and to continue to develop your products and services so that your company and brand are expanding and growing. Google is the giant that the vast majority of search engine data relies on, and it’s crucial for your SEO efforts to include a thorough understanding of the data that Google uses and how it affects your company. Two concepts in working with Google’s web results and the various ways it gathers data are AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages, and Google structured data.You may have heard these terms thrown around before, and are wondering what they exactly are and what they do for search engine rankings andother digital marketing efforts, and how you or your team can utilize these concepts to optimize your results. Read on to learn more about AMP versus structured data markup, and the ways that we at MyCity Social can utilize such information and concepts to direct more traffic to your website and grow your brand. MyCity Social is a top SEO Company Miami business owners rely on. Call MyCity Social today for your SEO and digital marketing needs and expand your business by reaching more clients today!
What is AMP?
Firstly, let’s start off with the concept of AMP and how it functions. AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages, is a way to construct web pages that can quickly render for their static content. When putinto action, AMP essentially is made up of AMP HTML, the AMP JS library, and the Google AMP Cache. When a page isn’t thoroughly optimized for mobile use, you run the risk of increased bounce rates- if a page does not load properly within 3 seconds, 30% of users will generally click away. The end product of AMP helps the performance of mobile websites on the internet significantly, and the difference is so great that the load time often can appear to be instant. AMP relies on existing technologies, and works in collaboration with the biggest names on the internet. AMP is not a totally new or innovative technique for creatig pages, as it basically is made up of regular HTML with a few restrictions and added specialized tags, meaning that AMP doesn’t need a lot of extra work. AMP JS functions to ensure that the most pressing content ois loaded quickly and clearly, while third party content such as ads are not placed in the front so that users are able to see the content they find relevant as soon as possible. AMP has discovered that content that loads fast results in reading quicker, and this in turn drives increased consumption of their content.
AMP and Google Structured Data
There are two main types of AMP, which are AMP JavaScript and AMP HTML.
- AMP JS- The AMP JavaScript (JS) library utilizes all of the best performance practices, manages loading resources, and gives the user their custom tags, all in order to ensure thatyour web page is rendered as quickly as possible. One of the major advantages of AMP JavaScript is that AMP JS is able to synchronize every element, including those from external sources, so that nothing within the page can be blocked from the rendering process. Other techniques that are used for performance include pre-calculating the layout of all elements on the page prior to the resources being able to be loaded, disabling CSS selectors that lag, and sandboxing all iframes.
- AMP HTML- AMP HTML is HTML that holds several different restrictions related to dependable performance and a few extensions for putting together rich content that is more than just the basic HTML. AMP HTML pages are rendered in a swift manner through the work of the AMP JS library, and Google’s AMP Cache helps to assist in the cache of AMP HTML pages. AMP HTML, basically, is standard HTML that incorporates custom AMP properties, and the majority of the tags in AMP HTML are standard tags, but some of them are replaced to fit with the AMP components, as common patterns are simple to use thanks to the work of these custom elements.
Google’s AMP Cache
AMP HTML and AMP JS are all part of the Google AMP Cache. Google’s AMP Cache is a proxy-based delivery network that is utilized to distribute all valid AMP documents. AMP HTML pages are transmitted and then cached by Google’s AMP Cache, and then the page performance of these AMP HTML pages are improved by Google’s AMP Cache. The document with all of its JS files and images when using this AMP Cache will load from the same origin that is utilizing the HTTP 2.0 for maximum efficiency. The cache system also provides a validation system that will confirm if a page is able to function without relying on resources that are external. A checklist of sorts will be used by the validation system to affirm that the markup of the page is able to meet the AMP HTML specifications. Each AMP page will come with a different version of the validating mechanism automatically, and this one can log the validation errors right onto the console of the browser when the page is being rendered, allowing the user to see the ways that the elaborate changes in code will affect the performance as well as the user experience.
How AMP Functions
Quick loading pages are created through AMP using a combination of a series of elements used to optimize the page. Preconnect API is a new system that is used to ensure that HTTP requests are successful as quickly as possible, and a web page is able to be rendered before the user explicitly states that they would like to navigate to it by using this, and thus the page will be more likely to be ready by the time that the user physically clicks on it, allowing for the instant loading of the web page. While content on the web can use this type of prerendering, it also takes up a lot of CPU and bandwidth. However, AMP can help to reduce both the amount of CPU and bandwidth that is used. Only resources above the fold are downloaded with prerendering, and things that could use a lot of the CPU are not rendered. AMP is an open source software effort, and builds pages for static content in order to make sure that the content is rendered as quickly as possible. Not a lot of extra effort is required to make sure that HTML is actually AMP HTML, and there are only a few extra extensions necessary to ensure that HTML is actually AMP HTML. Only a few extra extensions are necessary for the rich content, as well as certain restrictions that guarantee reliable performance, but if a website is faily simple to start with, AMP HTML may already be in compliance and AMP proves a step in the right direction with more and more of the population accessing information from their mobile devices.
Structure Data and SEO
One of the most important keys to success for your brand is to have a good online presence with excellent visibility. SEO is a concept that the vast majority of business owners have heard of, and most people are familiar with the basic concepts of SEO and common tricks to help increase the ranking of your site’s search engine pager results (SERP). It’s possible that you have heard of structured data before, but may not be sure what it has to do with SEO exactly. This is what MyCity Social, a top SEO company Miami business owners rely on, is here to help. Firstly, let us discuss what structured data is. You need to know what structured data looks like on SERPs. Basically, you can find this bit of information next to a website’s description. For example, if you look for a restaurant, you should be able to see some basic information as a snippet- their operating hours, pricing, and their reviews rating. This is the structured data output, and is also called a schema markup.
Structured data is important because it helps to contextualize data through a schema markup code, allowing web crawlers and search engines to understanding what you’re adding to your site and why. For example, if you add your contact details to the bottom of your web page, human viewers will be placataed, as they are able to easily understand that it is contact information. However, search engines and website crawlers need the structured data to understand. Textual content always contains some level of ambiguity, no matter how clear and concise your writing, as ambiguity can prove a natural aspect of language. This can complicate certain things when human language and computer language butt heads. Website builders create a visual building experience through coding, but website builders allow you to not have to do the coding yourself, as the data is automatically formatted into HTML code. Search engines can then more easily understand your content, though certain elements can still seem quite meaningless to website crawlers (what search engines use to browse) while being easily interpreted by the human eye.
Structured Data Helps SEO
Structured data assists search engines in understanding what the content on your website means, lending its context relevance. Structure data helps search engines contextualize your content better, giving search engines a better understanding of when it would be appropriate to display your site (or a particular page thereof) in its results page. This means that search engines will by default rank web sites and web pages with a schema markup higher than those who don’t. This is how structured data boosts SEO efforts on the technical side of things. With the human aspect of the same coin, aesthetically speaking structured data can also help. Since the search engine understands your site better with a schema markup it is able to create the snippets that we discussed earlier- the extra information that appears on the corners of sites. These snippets help web surfers who are looking at your page as it helps to summarize the basic and important information about your site or page right in the SERP, helping potential clients and customers reach your website and improving your web traffic in this way. Your website is thus more noticeable to not only web browsers but also human browsers, assisting greatly with SEO rankings.
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Google structured data and AMP are two concepts that are important in order to optimize your search engine results. MyCity Social is a top SEO company Miami businesses love. Call MyCity Social today to expand your business!
