The improvement of those page speeds was the impetus behind AMP, the Accelerated Mobile Pages initiative backed by Google that was launched in October 2015 with a handful of partners from the technology company. On February 24, 2016, Google officially integrated the AMP lists into its mobile search results and today, you will find AMP in more than 25 million domains.
AMP continues to evolve. Google recently said there are "more than 700 people contributing more than 10,000 confirmations on many millions of websites," and AMP is moving toward an "open government model." For its part, Bing finally announced the launch of the Bing AMP, viewer, which allows Bing mobile search engines to access AMP-enabled pages from search results.
As you look towards 2019, you should consider compatibility with mobile devices in general, and AMP in particular, in all aspects of your marketing. This involves more than formatting the content to represent it correctly on a smaller screen. There are some specific characteristics of AMP that can be exploited in the SERP: it is the only way to appear in a carousel of main stories, for example. Given the impending Christmas shopping season, there is no time like this to renew your commitment to the mobile.In this article, I will explore three specific areas of focus to improve your mobile strategy:
Local
The BrightEdge research found that, as of last year, 57% of all online traffic in the United States now comes from smartphones and tablets.Traffic from wireless and mobile devices will account for more than 63 percent of total IP traffic by 2021, according to the Cisco network firm . The world is online and most people on the planet are using mobile devices to find answers to their immediate needs.
When it comes to local content, mobile use is even more frequent, since 30% of mobile inquiries are based on location. Mobile search engines demonstrate great intention to buy, too; According to the Think With Google research, 76% of those who search "near me" (whether they use that real term or not) visit a local company in one day. In addition, 28% of those searches result in a purchase.
For national brands, 85% of the entire commitment takes place in local media assets, such as local landing pages. How can you take advantage of local mobile opportunities, whether for your single location business or for hundreds of locations across the country?
- Use the location data to address customers. Already 50% of the brands are doing it. You need to enter the game and there is still room to overcome local competitors that have been slower in acceptance.
- Reduce your local marketing radius. Consumers will travel farther for less frequent purchases, such as clothing or car repairs, but 93% usually travel 20 minutes or less for their general shopping needs. According to the Local Search Association, "urban consumers, who represent 83% of all buyers, prefer even shorter distances, with 92% traveling 15 minutes or less .... Therefore, local businesses must adjust their marketing reach to take into account the small radius of their audience. However, that hearing may include local residents, people who travel daily and who work nearby or who travel outside the city. So remember that distance becomes relevant in the micro moment when a need arises and it is not a static point for each individual ".
- Prioritize your AMP efforts. AMP improves the mobile user experience by reducing the weight of HTML pages through superior code hygiene and the AMP cache. Essentially, the AMP markup allows you to deliver a separate version of a page optimized for fast delivery on mobile devices. Google hosts the AMP files in its own content delivery network (CDN), so the content behaves as if it were being loaded from the browser cache instead of a remote server. Even so, it is not necessarily necessary throughout the site.
- Audit your domain for site errors. Be on the lookout for slow loading times and labels without an index index, and use the average time on the page and bounce rates to better understand how users engage with your content.
Visual
The number of thumbnails of images shown in Google's mobile search results has dramatically increased recently. Google continues to invest in visual search. Recently, Google announced that it is making visual content more useful in search by "helping people to find information better visually, and facilitate the search for help with respect to the things that people come to. Google images". Among these latest updates:- The AMP stories will now be shown on Google Images and Discover.
- Google is beginning to use artificial intelligence to intelligently build AMP stories and show this content in the search.
- Users can now visually preview topics with videos featured in the search.
- Google's image algorithm has been "revised" in the last year to rank results that have both excellent images and excellent content on the page. The authority of the page and the freshness of the content are two signs of classification with substantial weight in this algorithm.
- Google Images will show more context around the images, including titles that show users the title of the web page where each image is published.
- Google Lens is joining Google Images, to help users explore and learn more about the visual content they encounter during image searches.
- It's all part of Google's ambitious and newly published 20-year search perspective, which, as you might have guessed, relies heavily on AI. (Read the Outlook article from Google's search vice president, Ben Gomes).
What can you do to improve your visual search performance, with an eye on the mobile?
- Concentrate on the data that tells search engines and search engines what their images are about. Optimize image tags, data, tags and descriptors to help Google better index graphics and images.
- Choose the images with care. Pay attention to image quality, loading speed, visibility, context, authenticity and general visual appeal of the image.
- Be aware of the placement of the image. This latest ad from Google says: "Now we give priority to sites where the image is fundamental to the page, and higher on the page."
- Use both videos and images for products. According to Google, "By using computer vision, we can now deeply understand the content of a video and help you quickly find the most useful information in a new experience called featured videos."
- Familiarize yourself with the AMP stories. Familiarize yourself with the AMP stories. align with Google's innovation here and gain visibility in competitive SERPs.
Voice search
The prevalence of voice-activated assistants and the tendency of search engines to use voice for mobile consultations has led to two distinct and lucrative "zero position" types.The first is through a direct response at the top of the SERPs, which eclipses not only the organic results, but also the announcements. Google chooses a resource that responds best to the user's query in a few succinct phrases or a single paragraph, and gives it the most prominent page location.
The second type of "zero position" is the only result that returns in a voice query to a digital assistant. Of course, without a visual interface, there are no other blue links to click or videos or images to read.
However, buyers are not satisfied with the voice search. According to a Slyce.it report, 74% of shoppers report that text-only search is not enough to find the products they want.
How can you increase your voice "visibility" and offer a more satisfying user experience for voice seekers?
- Pay attention to the structure of the site and the architecture. If you have separate URLs for desktop and mobile devices, make sure that all the content on the desktop is assigned one by one to the URLs of your mobile devices.
- Content structure for verbal consultations. Voice searches tend to use complete sentences and natural language, unlike shorter text searches and keyword-centric searches. Voice queries can also be more specific and contextual, which requires a different method to structure the content. Google recommends: "For an optimal audio user experience, we recommend around 20 to 30 seconds of content per section of structured spoken data, or approximately two to three sentences".
- Reflects the style of questions and answers through which the voice results are delivered. What question is that your content responds to search engines? Include it in your title or subtitles to increase the chances of Google choosing your answer as the most relevant.
- Apply Google best practices in structured spoken data. For example, use headlines and / or concise summaries that provide users with understandable and useful information. Read more about that.
RE-AMP checklist
- Evaluate the mobile availability of your site for speed and ease of use.
- Track and mark the mobile range by device.
- Verify your mobile voice part and keep in mind that you may have different competitors in SERPs for mobile devices and in SERPs for desktop computers.
- Track the visibility of AMP in important keywords and get ready to migrate content and pages as you see increased use of AMP.
- Set up your tracking for local search and voice search.