How Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Affects SEO – Why it’s Important and How to Implement it

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is out and has been speculated to have two benefits for SEO. One is it will have a “Fast” label designation on search engine results pages, and the other is that it will be a ranking factor. As to how much of a factor, that is yet to be seen. I’ll take you through what AMP is and how you can use it to benefit your site’s mobile visitors.

What is AMP?

Accelerated Mobile Pages is an open-source coding standard for publishers. The aim for AMP is for publishers to be able to load their sites quickly on mobile since mobile responsive could be clunky and slow because desktop resources are heavy and plenty. If we’re going to be honest with ourselves, most of the elements of a desktop website is unnecessary for a mobile site.
Until recently, AMP was just for User Experience. Now, Google has backed it up – and is encouraging websites to follow suit. Much like how they heralded Schema.org and laid-low Dublin Core for Metadata.

Why is AMP Important?

Ever tried to load your site on mobile? Are you happy with the load speed? I know I’m not. Heck loading my site in desktop is taking long and I have a respectable amount of speed for my internet connection – but mobile? All I have is usually a clunky data plan with the mobile providers here in the Philippines.
Simply put, browsing on mobile while you’re on-the-go will mean that your internet speed is not always fast. So it’s best to optimize the experience of mobile browsing for all users (at least that’s what Google wants to happen) by standardizing a mobile version of your site with AMP. I’ll show you how to do it below.

Who will Benefit the Most from AMP?

I don’t believe that you’ll want to make your services or product landing pages into AMP. It would be stripped down of its first-impressions. That would defeat the purpose of your original design. So I don’t believe that everyone will be adopting AMP.
Thinking about our SEO Services site and how it would look like with AMP is just unimaginable. I think I’ll leave it as it is, thank you.
The sites that will benefit the most from AMP are publishing sites. Sites that produce content. So how you’ll apply this to your client is not by making their entire site into AMP. That might affect conversions negatively. Rather, you can transition your client’s blog section or news and updates section into AMP.

Actual Sites that Prefer Loading AMP

Try opening an article from Twitter from the native mobile app. you’ll notice that Twitter has its own browser now – and it’s not really loading sites fast enough. But if a site is using AMP then it loads fast even with Twitter’s native browser.

What’s the Difference Between AMP and Non-AMP Mobile Browsing?

One of the starkest differences is that AMP pages does not have a lot of stuff for a more complex user experience. Everything is stripped-down.

1. AMP forces you to use a streamlined version of CSS.
2. Javascript is not allowed at all – in fact, I’m still trying to figure out how to make share buttons appear on my AMP pages.
3. You are forced to use an off-the-shelf Javascript library that AMP provides you with – which forces your images to lazy load.

That’s it. Basically when you integrate AMP to standardize your mobile responsive pages, you are putting speed and readability as top priority over anything else – even over shareablility.

How can I Make AMP Work for my WordPress Site?

Here’s where things get interesting because you can actually integrate AMP in about 5 minutes for your WordPress site. Simply follow these steps:
1) Install the AMP WordPress plugin by Automattic
2) Activate the plugin – what it will do is append /amp on all your pages but what it won’t do is redirect mobile visitors to your /amp pages
3) So the next step is to edit your .htaccess file – you could use an FTP program to do this. I personally use Filezilla.
4) (Optional) Just in case you want to check if your AMP pages are working across the board: In your .htaccess file, paste this code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/amp$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (android|blackberry|googlebot\-mobile|iemobile|iphone|ipod|\#opera\ mobile|palmos|webos) [NC]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)([\/]*)$ https://example.com/$1/amp [L,R=302]
Note that you have to change example.com to your site’s domain name. I explicitly made the redirect into a 302 because we don’t want all the to link equity to be passed on to your /amp pages since it’s merely an accelerated mobile page version.
5) Lastly, you will want to edit the CSS to make your Accelerated Mobile Pages look and feel more like your site. You can edit the CSS using FTP by going to your wp-content -> plugins -> amp -> template.php
You could see that SEO Hacker’s Accelerated Mobile Pages still look and feel like our desktop page design – without all the fluff.

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An Introduction to Integrated Marketing and SEO: How It Works and Why It Matters

SEO industry has changed would be considered a massive understatement. In previous years, for a site to excel in the SERPs (search engine results page), it needed a few key important ingredients:

• A strong technical foundation, with a crawl-able and clean information architecture (that also contained a clear internal linking structure)
• The strategic use of target keywords on the page and in the URLs
• Key links with targeted anchor text

Now, the rules have simply changed. Not only are the SERPs displayed differently depending on the user's specific search query (Dr. Pete's Mozcon presentation pointed out 85 different, distinct features in the SERPs from knowledge graph to the related search carousel), but our day-to-day roles have changed. We're now supposed to be knowledgeable about UI/UX, branding, PR, responsive design, international considerations, content strategy/design/implementation, social media, structured data, local SEO, authorship markup, CRO, analytics... the list goes on and on. The reality is that it will always be important as marketers to have a high-level understanding about each of these different disciplines and how they should work together. However, it is impossible to be specialized in all of them. Many of the specialties above have been established industries for quite some time, and like SEO, they have improved and matured. In essence, we need to learn how SEO can integrate itself in a meaningful way with other marketing divisions, or in simpler terms, leverage integrated marketing.

Image courtesy of Mozcon

Why Integrated Marketing?

Integrated marketing is the strategy and implementation of leveraging and unifying different marketing activities. The overall purpose is to complement and reinforce the overall impact of each of these marketing methodologies, so that the marketing process is not only more consistent across different mediums, but also more effective in meeting marketing objectives and increasing a business's bottom line.
In terms of the industry, here are some statistics on overall digital marketing spend as compiled by Gartner in 2012.

• Companies in different industries spend an average 2.5% of their annual revenue on digital marketing.   
• 
  
  
• Companies spend an average 25% of their total marketing budget on digital marketing and specifically, on these type of marketing activities:
  
  
  
  

As the image above demonstrates, companies spend, on average, 10.7% of their total digital marketing budget on search marketing (though I'd venture and guess that the vast majority of this percentage goes to paid search). However, when it comes to the activities that marketers view as most attributable to their marketing success, only 8-9% of all companies surveyed rated search marketing (including paid) in their top 3.

Images courtesy of Gartner

This perception of search marketing (much less SEO) directly impacts the amount of budget and, subsequently, head space we receive from companies for our work. Although SEOs are involved in many of the activities companies attributable to their marketing success (like content development, UX/UI of the site, and commerce experience), it can be challenging as a consultant or working in-house to be involved in these types of conversations.
As an industry, we need to broaden our scope and find ways to immerse ourselves into these conversations. Like Wil Reynolds mentioned during his presentation at Mozcon, it's about knowing what to pitch and how to pitch.

• How can we demonstrate and provide value to a company's marketing activities and integrate SEO meaningfully into the process?
  • The goal doesn't necessarily have to be for SEOs to become specialized experts in PR, branding, content, etc., but more focused on how we all can leverage our knowledge and provide value to these existing activities, while also integrating ourselves into discussions on overall marketing vision, strategy, and implementation.
• How can we stop viewing marketing as distinct channels and, instead, work with other marketing specializations to reinforce and complement all marketing activities/goals/KPIs?

As the online marketing industry continues to change, it becomes more vital for a company to have a consistent mission and vision across all marketing channels.The purpose of this post is not only to inspire us to think bigger about the direction of our industry, but also in our day-to-day work. I also want to showcase examples of other companies I've researched that have successfully leveraged multiple marketing channels to meet common goals.

Integrated Marketing Examples

PR, Social, and SEO

Being at Distilled has provided me with the great fortune of being exposed to individuals with specializations beyond SEO, such as PR. Distilled's previous PR/SEO specialist (now at Dynamo PR), Lexi Mills, and our current specialist, Jess Champion, have really inspired me to think about how to make a content piece more compelling to its target audience and the media. For instance, Lexi once shared how critical it is to ensure that you have enough valuable resources on-hand to enhance a piece of content or a story. For instance, when making a pitch, it's important to ensure that you've created enough material for people to credit and that enhances the value of a story. Once you've built that relationship with the media and they've credited appropriate and legit sources, you've essentially accomplished link building without realizing it (receiving links didn't become a primary focus; it became a consequence of achieving bigger goals). Lexi said that, "As a result, the links you may have attained don't just look natural; they truly are natural."
For example, Australia.com's "Best Job in the World" campaign was effective for multiple reasons. It took a different spin on a concept that could traditionally be seen as "boring" (jobs) and created a hook to receive significant media attention. From a SEO standpoint, the team did a great job of attempting to put some of the campaign on the actual Australia.com domain (even though the actual competition is on a subdomain) because so many PR campaigns are placed on a separate domain and are never mentioned on the actual company website. Not to mention dominating rankings for the keyword phrase "best job in the world" and "best jobs in the world" (an effective branding play).

From a social media perspective, the only way to apply for the position was via Facebook. As a result of the campaign, several media outlets provided links to both Australia.com, as well as the "Best Job in the World" landing page. From the campaign, the site received 1,462 links from 442 linking root domains (including sites like ABC news, the Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror, etc..) From a social standpoint, the campaign has 483,534 likes and approximately 1,000 user interactions on every post.

Images courtesy of Australia.com

PR alongside SEO doesn't just apply to bigger organizations, but also to start-ups or any organization participating in crowd funding. Also according to Lexi, when doing PR for a start-up or an organization participating in crowd funding, it's important to make sure that the actual site is receiving link equity (and not just the crowd funding site). This is important when maintaining the sanctity of the brand because you still want to sell the product on a website once the crowd funding round is complete. You always want to rank first in search engines for your product name. Hence, leveraging the PR surrounding your crowd funding round will help get your potentially new site off to a great foundation.

Or, you can ultimately decide to crowd fund on the product's actual website and reap all the benefits from PR and media coverage directly for your site, such as the case with the Tile App.

 Finally, like many other online marketing channels, it's important to make decisions off the back of data. SEO and PR can support one another because SEOs and PRs can work together to determine the specific keywords they want to target for a campaign (both from a branding and from a search engine/user intent perspective) using tools like Google Trends and Google Adwords Keyword Tool. We can also work together to help establish the sites we want to target both from a publicity and a link equity standpoint using metrics, such as DA and PA, as well as what types of credit we want to receive (dofollow link vs image, etc...).

Overall, as SEOs, we also want to help ensure that once a PR campaign is complete, the company can still reap long-term benefits from it whether it be from a technical standpoint (during the course of researching this post, I observed countless PR campaign sites containing 3-5 duplicate home pages and non-indexable content in iframes, sites built in flash, broken links, etc.). In addition, doing so will help ensure that the company will continue ranking for that campaign name in the future, instead of only the PR agency ranking for it (when they publish client case studies).

Offline (Events/Print Advertising/Billboards), Mobile, and SEO

Offline campaigns (like events/print advertising/billboards) have historically been a powerful marketing medium. At the same time, it can be challenging figuring out how offline channels can work seamlessly with online ones. I found inspiration through this image of a recent American Express campaign seen in London (unfortunately it's a little blurry).

There's so much potential from a campaign like this. Having users search for an easy-to-remember keyword phrase on their mobile devices (in this case, having them search "AMEX Gold Tube" is another opportunity to gather data for a traditionally difficult-to-measure channel). Depending on the brand, it's an opportunity to measure traffic (and some of the keyword data that brought users to the site, with the notable exception of "not provided" and others), as well as some compelling mobile usage data (do your research beforehand, especially as it pertains to iOS6 and Android 4 search traffic). It's also an opportunity to create a seamless offline to online interaction that could result in SERP dominance for specific, brand-based terms. Also, depending on the search term that was chosen, it could also be an effective medium to immediately convert users from both a PPC and a SEO perspective. The biggest challenge and goal for a SEO is to ensure that the correct landing page for the specific keyword lands on the number one spot in the SERPs while also creating an ideal SERP landscape (alongside improving conversions for that specific landing page).

Another interesting offline campaign that has become more and more popular is the emergence of pop-up stores. I found the use of Debenhams virtual pop-up stores particularly fascinating. Debenhams created a tour of London's most famous sites and once shoppers were in the correct location on an app, users could "try on" different outfits using augmented reality technology with a backdrop of famous London landscapes. Shoppers could then upload their favorite outfits and receive opinions via social media. If they choose to purchase any of the outfits, they'd automatically receive a 20% discount. Debenhams also implemented SEO best practices in a compelling way by leveraging the press to garner links to key category pages, such as in press releases and asking for any articles or media coverage mentioning the Debenham's virtual pop-up store to give the company proper credit.

Content, Branding, and SEO

Content is one of my greatest passions because I find telling compelling stories and helping my clients build a brand so personally fulfilling. In many ways, content and SEO work seamlessly together, especially in an era where so many individuals have developed the habit of researching information on their own using the Internet. For example, Adria Saracino and I have repeatedly found (whenever we conduct customer surveys), that so many individuals decide to purchase a product based on what they read over the Internet. This means that in order to become successful at SEO (not just in the form of rankings, but in conversions), we need to ensure that we're consistently developing content that relays trustworthiness/authority/loyalty to our customers, while also remaining vigilant about our online reputation.

There have been so many amazing companies that create content for the benefit of their intended audience and subsequently reap the benefits of it like the often mentioned Survey Monkey Survey Templates and MailChimp Resource Guides. However, not all amazing content is in written form. Sometimes content in image form is as, if not more effective (especially if it's pertinent to your brand).

Take, for instance, Polyvore's vision "to capture the breadth of soft goods and people's tastes better than any other platform thanks to a unique, vibrant community of contributors and cutting edge technology." (more detail about the vision can be found here.) Polyvore encapsulates its vision by providing its users with a platform to essentially create their own content using their editor (it's so simple, yet fits so seamlessly with their target audience and vision). Its editor has generated 18,664 links from 237 linking root domains. However, Polyvore also created a tool that doesn't limit its users to build collages out of products that can be found on their site. You can drag, edit, and link any clip onto your collage using their clipper (and for SEOs, the clipper landing page has generated 18,646 links from 70 domains. Plus, from an SEO standpoint, all the tools are a part of the domain, which is an added bonus. Oh, and if you really fall in love with your collage, you can purchase it immediately on their site (content merging with commerce...so many opportunities!).

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