How to Prepare your Retail AMP Pages for Top PPC Performance
Are you still trying to sell your wares from the back of a pickup truck? Or have you advanced your mobile marketing strategies to fast-loading mobile pages and to leveraging AdWords?
Today, even organic search is highlighting retail pages within the Google Shopping tab. Are you wondering why AMP eCommerce websites outperform traditional pages? Or are you seeking a deeper understanding as to how AMP eCommerce pages compare to traditional HTML pages? We are happy to share our experience.
To strategize, manage, and optimize E-commerce for the mobile market, you need to set targets, review performance, and compare your progress against other competitors. Getting into the e-Commerce retail mobile space is fast-paced and offers the potential for enormous success. If you are interested in making solid changes to your digital marketing strategies; you need to invest where Google invests. Rather than extensively probing into each individual algorithm update—and adjusting your search marketing accordingly — your business is best served by focusing on the underlying themes that each one of Google’s update was intended to address. Mobile search, and the wonders of Artificial Intelligence that are behind it, clearly point to the value of putting time and budget into fast-loading retail Accelerated Mobile Pages!
The mobile version of your website should be rich with metadata, schema markup, quality content, and AMP pages so that it is equal to or superior to your desktop version. Google has switched to the mobile-first index and PPC managers are forced to consider new ways to optimize paid search spends for improved retail sales volumes.
Google began testing AMP-enabled landing pages from mobile Search ads over a year ago, as the company’s commitment to the AMP project is continually underscored. More recently Google’s experiments to render the AMP lightning icon next to the description in some of those text ads have been found. According to Ginny Marvin, who writes for both Search Engine Land and Marketing Land, a Google spokesperson stated: “We’re always testing new ways to improve our experience for our advertisers and users, but don’t have anything specific to announce right now.”
Quick Checklist of What Ecommerce Marketers can Use on AMP Landing Pages:
What do I need to do to modernize my retail landing pages?
- Add product structured data
- Full HTTPS protocol integration.
- Developed product content.
- Clean URL structure.
- Match search intent.
AMP Accelerated Mobile Pages Drive Retail Shopping
Adding structured data to a site demands that webmasters keep their code current. This aspect of mobile SEO is rapidly changing and favoring Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).
Shoppers don’t wait. You have to be immediate, relevant, and show up wherever they are. Online companies that are taking a larger slice of retail sales have figured out that “fast = more revenue,” and so they accommodate consumers’ insatiable demand for instant answers. In this way, they build a strategic retail advantage. Many are embracing conversational AI and chatbots for personal and immediate responses.
It doesn’t require a huge monetary investment to deliver more speed. The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) program is both free and open-source. AdWords advertisers can still use the technology to serve faster AMP landing pages that provide a critical edge in a crowded retail niche. Mobile’s expanding role can be found in every step of the customer journey. Having a strong mobile presence is essential for improving your brand awareness. PPC advertisers must go beyond taking into account mobile’s influence in clients’ advertising strategies; they must make mobile a core principle of their digital marketing plan.
Not only do these pages have load optimizations that display a full page instantly, but they also leverage prerendering. The semantic web is more about data that lives in one state, regardless of what device a user prefers. While this supports user choice, it expands all the different types of potential search results and makes indexing all of them harder. With anticipations that the new Google mobile-first index will mash websites together with apps, PWAs, and other data sets that aren’t reliant on URLs, structured data markup becomes increasingly necessary.
eCommerce Accelerated Mobile Pages and AMP Shopping Carts
In 2018, you can do just about everything in a retail AMP shopping cart that you can in HTML 5. RocketAmp is a Shopify app***** to integrate Google’s Accelerated Mobile technology with just a click. The adoption of mobile technology is influencing how retailers use AMP pages. Google is now organizing its new index with a wider range of unique identifiers that may include web URLs and app URIs.
After adding AMP versions to a website, this is where we find that Google is more demanding as to how schema code is implemented. For example, even though the AMP test link results the Google Search Console (GSC) says: “Valid AMP page. Page is eligible for AMP search features in Google search results”, only after updating the product schema code will that specific page be dropped from the GSC “Prohibited or invalid use of HTML Tag (Critical issue)”.
Desktop pages that test fine for correctly implemented Product schema at this moment, still have AMP smartphone pages which only validate without spammy structured data when using JSON-LD code, versus older formats. Getting both HTML 5 pages and AMP pages functioning with a validated schema can be a differentiator. For eCommerce businesses in a highly competitive retail landscape, today it is must.
What is Changing in Mobile Search in 2023?
The pace of mobile SERPs for retailers is changing so fast that it is hard to keep up with. New, more visual mobile search results help feature prodcuts. The new Google Generative Search Experience intends to make it easier for mobile shoppers to filter their search and find products faster.
“With our new generative AI experience in Search, you’ll get even more from a single search. You’ll be able to quickly make sense of information with an AI-powered snapshot, pointers to explore more and natural ways to ask,” was stated at May’s Google I/O 2023 event.
Now, let’s answer more of the most often asked questions.
Common Questions and Answers about Retail Accelerated Mobile Pages
- 1. What elements make up a great retail AMP page?
- 1. What makes up a great retail AMP page?
- 2. Will Schema Markup Help my Mobile PPC Performance?
- 3. Do AMP Landing Pages Offer a PPC Advantage?
- 4. Is there an Expanded Reliance on Structured Data Markup in Mobile Search?
- 5. Does Structured Data Markup for HTML 5 work for AMP?
- 6. Do I Need Both AMP and Structured Data Markup?
- 7. How Do I Fix Missing Structured Data Elements?
- 8. If I Mark Up my Retail Listings Will I Get Found in Voice Search?
- 9. How will Google AMP affect Semantic SEO?
- 10. Are Retail-related AMP Insights in my Analytics?
- 11. Can Structured Data help me Customized the AMP Shopping Experience?
- 12. Should I Use GSI Workflows, Review Processes, and Infrastructure for AMP Landing pages?
1. What elements make up a great retail AMP page?
- Fast loading.
- Content that is relevant.
- Page elements that assist the buyer in making the purchase quickly.
- The customer feels in control.
- Markup makes the content and its context easy for search engines to understand.
- A helpful call-to-action that aids consumers’ next steps.
Jason Spero, the VP of Global Performance Solutions at Google, wrote on Sep 2017 in How to make every mobile moment a brand-builder that “Nearly 9 in 10 smartphone owners who describe a mobile brand experience as helpful or relevant would purchase from the brand again”.
So while being slow matters, there is more to having a great AMP page experience than speed alone. For example, retail buyers will avoid annoying experiences. If they click on your URL because they already have purchase intent, they may leave shortly if a frustrating pop-up Ad blocks their ability to read the page. When it comes to mobile, marketers need to make sure content assists the buyer, is relevant to the item they are interested in, and that they can make decisions while feeling in control throughout their purchase.
2. QUESTION: Will Schema Markup Help my Mobile PPC Performance?
ANSWER: Schema structured data makes it easier to match your AMP content to the user’s query. The end result is that it lowers bounce rate issues simply by better relevancy, which is core to the user experience. One notable change in the pay per click (PPC) channel for e-commerce retailers in 2018 is a rise in the mobile cost per click. The difference can be made up by winning more relevant clicks by engaging structured data. Cost Per Click (CPC) refers to the real price you spend for each click in your pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns. iProspect reports that one huge shift in Q4 performance was a 41 percent spend increase in Shopping ad CPC and a 26 percent year-over-year CPC increase in the cost of mobile ads.
AMP-supported structured data for better PPC results:
Many e-commerce marketers who manage retail brands find the importance of capitalizing on structured data, both site-wide and on product pages. It has the potential to yield featured rich snippets or visible product data directly in organic search engine result pages (SERP’s). Machine learning also uses this product data in the Google Merchant Center in combination with feed data to screen and display certain information on-page.
Taking it a step further, this data may be additionally leveraged for Google Shopping / Product Listing Ad (PLA) campaigns and begins to circumvent the data submitted from product feeds or at least expand the extent of data that will be dynamically gleaned from landing pages. Anticipated advancements envision further enhanced rich product details being presented as knowledge graph cards or new types of display within paid search results.
A focal point for e-commerce retailers is increasingly on structured schema markup implementation that provides data to platforms such as Google Manufacturer Center and Google Merchant Centre.
The key potential organic SEO benefit is the performance increase in SERP’s CTR because shoppers can respond quickly to the enhanced and engaging data that is immediately displayed such as pricing, stock availability, and the number and the score of review ratings. PPC works in the same manner. Your Google AdWords quality score, how your ad groups are optimized, and how user-friendly your mobile website is, contribute to your mobile PPC performance. They should all be on your mobile marketing checklist. Structured data makes it clearer to search engines what the content is about, and makes it easier for Google algorithms to dynamically pull more product information to display within PLA Shopping results. On the human side, people feel more confident of a rich URL before clicking, arrive where they want to go, and positively influence CTR’s due to an enhanced user experience.
Projecting into 2018, iProspect says, “Mobile clicks are now declining partly due to CPC increases. In addition to expecting continued CPC increases, advertisers should also keep an eye on additional advancements in automation through machine learning and audience targeting as well as new opportunities in structured data and mobile”.
3. QUESTION: Do AMP Landing Pages Offer a PPC Advantage?
ANSWER: Yes, it is possible that your PPC marketing dollars are being wasted due to slow landing page load time on mobile devices. In September 2017, advertisers were granted the ability to designate AMP landing pages as destination URLs for their AdWords campaigns. Early adopters have already reported significant improvements in key performance indicators like bounce rate, time on site, and conversion rate.
The AdWords platform continues to expand its features; examples are contextual smart bidding (with eCPC), dynamic ad copy serving, and data-driven attribution. With progression, advertisers can test these features to make the most of new opportunities. With the new AdWords feature called In-Market Audiences for search, it is possible to target people who are both searching your keywords AND have already shown purchase intent through their recent search behavior. Now that you can show up faster than non-AMP pages, you can nab that strong candidate!
“The number of mobile phone users in 2018 is 5.135 billion, up 4 percent year-on-year”, according to Simon Kemp who authored the January 30, 2018 Digtial in 2018: World’s Internet Users Pass the 4 Billion Mark article*. The increase in affordable smartphones and better mobile data plans has tipped even more people into buying their first mobile device in 2017 and joining the burgeoning number of mobile retail shoppers.
“The latest data from Statista’s Digital Market Outlook shows that the total value of the e-commerce market for consumer goods grew by 16 percent over the past year. Total annual spend in 2017 reached almost US $1.5 trillion, with fashion products representing the largest single category,” he recaps from mobile user statistics provided by We are Soclia, Hootsuite, and Statistica. It is tough to offer users better speed load than that of an AMP page. People want the assurance that they are reaching the most relevant page with the right answers on it. This requires one that is highly optimized for a specific product query.
Over half of today’s handsets that are being used are ‘smart’ devices, making it easy to enjoy a rich internet experience wherever one is by simply talking to a digital assistant. Going forward, businesses must know how to market in the mobile space if they want to grow – or even stay alive. Your business can leverage Google Ads and Ad Extensions for better mobile engagement.
Building visually-rich, interactive AMP pages for E-Commerce were covered at the Google I/O ’17 event. Image-rich AMP pages supported with optimized text can help your products surface in visual search.
4. QUESTION: Is there an Expanded Reliance on Structured Data Markup in Mobile Search?
ANSWER: Yes. Google has continued its push for it. Webmasters are asked to mark up everything possible with structured data *******, from reviews and factual data to social profiles, corporate contact information, books, events, courses and industry-specific data. Structured data and specifically schema markup that is formatted with JSON-LD offers a better semantic understanding, which assists GoogleBot in determining “entities.” The “LD” part of the term JSON-LD represents Linked Data.
Most SEO’s are now aware that structured data must become a significant aspect as it helps Google know what a web page is about without being so dependent on crawling and parsing all the content available about a business — which is a gigantic-sized task that continues to escalate. This is what prompted Google to request more data-rich assets are marked up in correct JSON-LD format. And it seems to be especially seeking trusted and fact-checked web content. Featured rich snippets utilize schema markup to show content in a way that displays in more engaging visual formats.
These are especially useful for interactions user have with Google Home, Google Assistant and Chromecast; it simplifies tasks like securing restaurant reservations, booking travel tickets, finding desired music, TV, movies, authors, performers, and recipes. Schema markup on AMP’s fast pages gives Retailers who have a strong commitment to enhance the user experience and who are seeking opportunities in the fast-growing mobile space a real advantage.
Web pages that have correctly implemented structured data make quick work of parsing and presenting relevant results on non-traditional devices when leveraging voice search from Google Assistant, Google Home, Android Auto and similar platforms such as Amazon Alexa, Siri, Fitbit and voice-enabled TV remotes. One area needing more content is Google’s structured data documentation for databases or dataset markup. Databases aren’t as dependent on URLs or websites, which leads to speculation that the mobile-first index won’t be built only on URLs for indexing and will make better use of schemas and entity perception.
On mobile results, Google aggregates rich results that pool information to answer popular queries that often includes lists and links to a Wikipedia page. Below that, Google displays a “People Also Searched For” carousel of content that offers additional information, such as when looking for a book, about authors who write in the same genre.
Research suggests that Google is using clicks on carousels that load in the bottom of its knowledge graphs to verify and vet the linked data that it has assimilated about this business, movie, or author. The greater the number of clicks that a carousel item gains, the more likely that it will be linked to in future queries on the topic. Learn how the “People also search for” SERP feature works.
Google is Encouraging Responsive AMP-compatible Ad Units*:
You can create your own retail AMP ad Unit. After you’ve placed your AMP ad code between the head tags of your AMP HTML, test and tweak your ads on several mobile device types to ensure that the responsive behavior is working as intended.
When checking how these ads display on your own AMP pages, be aware that there may be a delay before ads start to show as AMP prioritizes the content. How AMP pages are cached is changing as more advanced use cases emerge. Current favorites include fixed-sized AMP ads and the ability to style your AMP ad. For more sophisticated use cases, just style your AMP ad elements to control layout options like any other AMP element.
5. QUESTION: Does Structured Data Markup for HTML 5 work for AMP?
ANSWER: Yes. But it involves more technicalities. To fully emerge your site in AMP and completely give your pages the full benefit that can offer, you need to add structured data wherever possible, making sure that you include schema that includes your industry’s niche. Google uses several Schema.org items to take care of the more interactive parts of AMP elements. You can use Yoast SEO in conjunction with our AMP Glue plugin to take care of most AMP needs.
On February 24, 2016, Google initially rollout Accelerated Mobile Page results into its mobile search engine. Web pages enriched with AMP coding are given special places in mobile SERPs with a special AMP lightning indication. This new algorithm is highly dedicated to improving load speed on mobile devices. Anyone can benefit from this Google-backed open source initiative that supports publishers and web designers who seek mobile-friendly content that load instantly across the burgeoning world of mobile devices.
Digital Marketers are becoming more keenly aware of the benefits that Google AMP is likely to provide on their website ranking as well as in additional spheres of their marketing efforts. Embracing AMP as a frontrunner can make your business more competitive. Speed is said to be the most important area that ranks high with users and Google in the year ahead. And when it comes to making it easier for machines to comprehend your site, there are key things that you should be aware of when it comes to structured data on your Google AMP pages.
Google documents state: “Use the same structured data markup across both the canonical and AMP pages”. Then it adds, “For AMP-specific examples, see Internationalization“.
Here is where we think it takes a familiarity with AMP to understand its terminology. You’ve worked hard work to implement markup for your products, aggregated customer reviews, business events, and menu items; you want to know that Google can pick up this data and present it in an enhanced way on your designated mobile pages.
6. QUESTION: Do I Need Both AMP and Structured Data Markup?
ANSWER: Yes, if you want to be competitive. AMP is already showing great promise and results for several businesses, and Google seems committed to its future. The success of AMP will depend largely on how quickly and correctly SEO’s integrate it. Schema markup will help explain your page so it is more useful when matching search intent.
As 2018 began, it has already become more of a standard. For the foreseeable future, we believe that AMP is the future of the mobile web. It delivers the best results available for something that most users really care about – speed.
Google is not slowing its AMP investment pace but is rather adding plenty of resources to implementing AMP’s new features. This means that marketers can expect to see visibility improvements if they choose to use it. In particular, if their website had no markup and was previously slow to load. And despite its limitations, its benefits seem to be stronger. Test your schema on both your HTML5 and AMP pages. Find what could be something that is dropping in your AMP versions; most likely you need to watch for page elements that are more strictly coded for this type of page. Correcting any dropped code or mobile schema errors can possibly increase your page rankings.
AMP pages have become recognized as fast, but without customization, some seem ugly or too plain. Your customization options are expanding with new functionality for user interactivity; it’s now easier than ever for an AMP version of a page to look much the same as the non-AMP version. Recent AMP tests show results no longer are being served up for only mobile search; increasingly, they display for desktop searches as well. Don’t just consider having a responsive site, but rather ensure that your AMP pages are also responsive to provide a positive experience for desktop users.
7. QUESTION: How Do I Fix Missing Structured Data Elements?
ANSWER: Audit thoroughly. No one starts out as an expert. Currently, the validation tools are relatively new, too. If you have added your first AMP page and now find the Search Console message, “Missing structured data element: add structured data element”, it may validate without errors and yet fail to meet all guidelines.
Google’s data structures are highly optimized so that a large document collection can be crawled, indexed, and searched as fast as possible. Although CPUs and bulk input and output rates have improved dramatically for AMP pages, Google wants to avoid load delays for fancy page elements whenever feasible. This has a considerable influence on the design of its data structures. Most Internet users simply want answers, not highly-designed pages stuffed with ads and duplicate content. Individual page content should be less about everything that your business offers and more tightly woven with a specific topic.
Focus how helpful your content is. All the bells and whistles that you currently have on your website may not work with AMP. Nor are they desired by readers who want solutions. Mobile searchers want immediate access to relevant information. Google staff Tom T. says, “Don’t worry about the ‘Info: Missing structured data element’ error – it’s not really an error more a warning saying that we can’t see the structured data we’d expect for eligibility for the Top Stories carousel which is specific to news-y type content. As your page type isn’t news-y the warning can be ignored.”
Each individual page stands on its own. The issue may be that the page doesn’t contain any structured data, or that its structured data is not of the required type. Test your AMP pages and listing With Fetch as Google and Google’s AMP Test****because it’s largely how search engines see the web. To narrow down which element is missing the properly structured data, think in terms of a block-level analysis. This will help to map areas by each section of a page to the section of a page. So that means using section as well as div.
Check the supported attributes for each AMP tag and remove or repair the one that is disallowed. For example, one of your AMP error pages was fixed when we loaded the video content via iFrame instead. We monitor all our AMP page content weekly if not daily to check for new validations and or errors.
8. QUESTION: If I Mark Up my Retail Listings Will I Get Found in Voice Search?
ANSWER: Add voice actions. To get ahead of your competition in AdWords paid search and rank for relevant buyer queries, you may want to be a frontrunner by migrating to AMP for your retail product pages and mark up your listings. By prioritizing the adoption of SEO strategies for voice search and mobile, your schema markup on your website can help you gain a stronger presence on Google Maps, quick answers, Knowledge Graphs, and additional forms of featured rich snippets.
Users’ voice and text action requests can take a potential customer directly to your Android app, so they can get to your native mobile shopping cart quickly and easily. The search giant is preparing a broad expansion of voice actions beyond its search app. All a person needs to do is simply say “OK Google…” and complete their query. Hollywood takes advantage of speech recognition to thrill and excite moviegoers with a memorable scene, shoppers call up a business to make a travel booking or dinner reservation, and now they can even find out who has an item in stock for immediate pickup.
JSON-LD markup for E-commerce is helping many businesses connect and offer amazing shopping experience online. SEO markup helps both search engines and site visitors find what they are searching for while assisting your business by getting them to click, convert, and become a customer. With immediacy being a clear demand in consumer shopping behaviors, online brands have to adjust how they market to prospective customers, as well as the user experience. By marking up your listings, visitors won’t be disappointed by arriving on a less relevant page and will instead ensure an enjoyable experience.
9. QUESTION: How will Google AMP affect Semantic SEO?
ANSWER: Speed is foremost. In our world of voice technology, it is easier than ever for people to gain answers while on the go. Ask yourself, why would they wait for your pages to load if someone else answers them faster? To provide stellar user experiences, your content needs to be readily available for all search query types and found instantly. By providing answers shoppers are looking for, you can increase your Ad spend conversion rate=.
even though up till now AMP has not been a direct search engine factor, page load speed is. It is core to search engine ranking. As a result, Accelerated Mobile Pages will impact SEO substantially if your website is not up to par for being quick. For example, two otherwise equal sites in terms of SEO will find that the one with the better speed will receive precedence. This search trend isn’t going away. If you want free or paid traffic from Google, it is best to provide the mark-up for your listings that they are asking for. Too many website owners haven’t been making their sites fast enough: they seem stuck by what they can see on the page versus what works best for searchers.
“A Google spokesperson said “as you know we do tens of thousands of experiments in search every year but there are no such plans at this moment to change anything. The (AMP) logo tells users that the page they will open will do so reliably and consistently fast.” – Google Support
“Enhanced listings give searchers an easier way to pick a result from the list of links. If your listing is rich, and your page does what your listing promises, you are a valid result for the customer and that will lead to a lower bounce rate. A lower bounce rate tells Google that your site is a well-regarded result that promises and delivers.” – Edwin Toonen on Yoast******
It is best to keep a balanced approach. To truly future-proof your website, don’t over-rely on one thing, such as AMP to trim page load times. Make use of additional tools like GTMetrix and Google Page Speed Insights to find all factors that contribute to longer page load issues. Seek to reduce those load times as much as possible; the payback is enormous.
10. QUESTION: Are Retail-related AMP Insights in my Google Analytics?
ANSWER: Yes, you can track AMP visits. Google is rolling out more AMP data in their Analytics Reports to let businesses know how their AMP users are engaging content. In the future, we hope there will be more data to support where a publisher’s content is loading from. In deference to a user’s privacy, cookie restrictions can limit visitor identification. Google Analytics is now doing a much better task of tracking AMP visits; plan for someone skilled being in charge of your setup to get it working best.
The Twitter platform has supported AMP since its inception by making it possible to embed tweets directly within AMP articles, and now Twitter provides analytics on AMP content shared on the platform.
Eric Enge of Stone Temple urges, “If you are using Google Analytics, session stitching is a critical issue. Without it, your analytics will simply be wrong. In a nutshell, Google Analytics will see the visitors to your AMP pages as being on a different site. Your AMP pages will show poor user engagement metrics as a result. To measure how you are doing with your AMP pages, you need to get accurate data!”
We believe that every business website needs to identify and apply insight-driven decisions, whether you are in retail, consumer goods, banking, sell services online or are a non-profit organization. Along with an on-going audit process, those best practices are the backbone of your e-Commerce technical SEO for retail AMP pages.
11. QUESTION: Can Structured Data help Customized AMP Shopping Experiences?
ANSWER: Yes, schema plays a role in retail conversion rate optimization (CRO). The AMP Project lists examples of how to customize your checkout flow. CRO is a priority for most e-commerce brands; there is too much revenue to lose otherwise. However, it is not a standalone task. Evergreen high-value content curation, improving the user experience and load times, all need to be balanced and viewed for each aspects’ overall impact on your online brand. Each always benefits the others.
The amp-access element is one way to customize the content shown to visitors based on the status of that individual, for example, whether or not they’re logged in. This allows you to personalize the shopping experience (which can improve CRO). Where you place your aggregated review and product schema is very strategic in the buyer journey. It also matters to Google and you need to be well versed in their AMP on Google Search Guidelines**.
Additionally, the AMP platform is easy to make GDPR compliant for US businesses that need to take precautions.
How you add your schema code may hinder the performance of your site. Broken code or too much unnecessary code adds to the browser’s workload. The September 15, 2016 article titled Improving Click Through Rate; the power of Schema*** by SEO Liverpool states, “It’s(Schema) much more engaging and useful to a user. Engagement alone can play a massive role in improving click-through rate to your website!”
Begin improving your click-through rate with Schema by:
- Gaining trust online to start improving click CRO
- Offering detailed and markup up information that search engines and people can find
- Pleasing visitors and entice them to return because your content is relevant
- Gaining more visibility in the Google Maps Local Pack
How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line
According to Smart Insights, “every delay of just one second in your load time you take a 7% hit in your conversation rates because visitors start bailing”. Kissmetrics found that “A 1-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions***.”
Shopify says, “90% of AMP Publishers are seeing higher click-through rates with AMP”. The web page posted December 20, 2017 by Carliz Teague of Hairextensions is titled RocketAmp – Ecommerce Plugins for Online Stores and runs $14 per month for the plugin.
Myriam Jessier stresses in Smashing Magazine that “The main advantage of AMP for retailers is that slow loading times kill conversions. Selling products to people when they want them makes a huge difference to a business’ bottom line. Many shoppers will go to a competitor’s website if yours is too slow to load. Put that in a mobile context, and a slow loading time means losing 40% of visitors — potential customers who will take their dollars elsewhere”. Her April 12, 2017 AMP For Retailers: Is It Worth It? article states that AMP product and listing pages add value to the customer decision journey.
Improved search ranking and faster time-to-interactive are essential to ensure that retailers hold or gain market share. The average retailer is challenged with flat or declining organic search traffic, and slow sites now faced being penalized by Google with lower rankings in search results.
Use Shopify or WooCommerce (a favorite e-commerce platform for WordPress) to benefit from AMP: start with a plugin like WP AMP, or the official WordPress AMP plugin. WP AMP integrates with WooCommerce out of the box. The normal WordPress AMP plugin is best with custom adjustments to work with WooCommerce. Depending on your SEO technical skills you may want to read more on GitHub****.
12. QUESTION: Should I Use GSI Workflows, Review Processes, and Infrastructure for AMP Landing pages?
ANSWER: GS1’s vocabulary is still in its infancy stage. Dan Brickley and Google’s John Mueller confer that it isn’t a separate thing. It contributes finer detail to https://Schema.org Product markup that both Google Search and mobile shoppers use. The emphasis on Twitter communications is adding a more useful structure to your web content. As one could expect, Google doesn’t make any promises but indicates that adopting this e-commerce marketing strategy is worthwhile, saying “that direction seems healthy”.
Brickley emphasizes that “Strong identifiers are foundational for richer metadata!”
Implementing GSI SmartSearch involves many of the same Schema elements SEOs are already using, with the addition of more advanced elements. GS1 posts a full guide that provides the details on Product and other types of Schema markup. Currently, the best code format is JSON-LD and akin to the regular Schema Product markup, it must reside within the body section of its web page and the content must be easy for site visitors to read on the page.
The AMP Project offers web developers example code that they need to generate attractive, highly functional eCommerce landing pages.
13. QUESTION: Do I Need Both Non-AMP and AMP Forms of Schema for Retail Products?
ANSWER: One schema should work for all. However, we find that because AMP pages have their own unique set of coding rules, often if missed, the schema implemented on your desktop pages does not validate as well on AMP versions.
AMP-supplied JavaScript is now less limited in what it can do. Sliders, forms, and unique calls-to-action have overcome many former challenges. As both new ways to use schema entities and AMP formats expand, more sophisticated branded site designs with richer functionality are no longer such a matter of compromise. Also, soon we are told that AMP URLs will no longer send users to cached Google.com URL, but that they will remain on the marketer’s site.
“In some cases, you might want to have both a non-AMP and an AMP version of the same page, for example, a news article. Consider this: If Google Search finds the non-AMP version of that page, how does it know there’s an AMP version of it? Linking pages with
linkin order to solve this problem.” – AMP Project Discovery
SEO is more about preparing today for how to win in search tomorrow. It can be rough to forever be in a “catch up” mode. Last year AMP pages that were eligible to show up under Top Stories in Google’s mobile results increased in number. Now we are seeing an increasing percentage of major non-Google sites have begun to display AMP versions of pages when available. Key such sites are Twitter and Bing. By incorporating as much schema structured data in your evergreen content as you can, you increase your chances of having high image-rich visibility in retailer related AMP carousels.
If these 13 AMP Landing Page answers helped you, please share or leave a comment below.
Improve Mobile PPC Performance with Google AMP
An essential strategy of any PPC mobile campaign should be on the user experience. Mobile-optimized sites with fast-loading landing pages that your ads point to are now a necessity for advertisers. Among other features, mobile-optimized sites should contain clear but simplified navigation, user-friendly interfaces, adapted content, optimized images, and on-topic, structured text.
User demands for improved mobile site speed can strain developers’ bandwidth and, in some cases, their ability to compete. For web designers, it is easy to be distracted by the “shiny objects” of emerging tech.
Robin Kurzer of MarTech says that “online ad spending will grow by $47.8 billion in 2018 and of that growth, 91 percent will come from mobile including mobile social, search and display”. The 2018 Mobile AdWords marketing priorities it draws in its Get back to basics: New Forrester report lays out priorities for mobile marketers Feb 26, 2018, article strongly urge reviewing business KPIs to increase mobile’s share in your marketing mix.
Structured Data Attributed for EBay’s Strong Growth in Mobile Retail
If your business is waiting to see how AMP for e-commerce is working for others, there is a new flush of data surfacing. For example, often cited in 2017, eBay is investing copiously in engaging AI and machine learning to personalize the mobile shopping experience. Notably, the integration of eBay’s Shopping Assistant with Alphabet’s Google Home capacities means that users can converse with Google Assistant to locate specific items on eBay and then tell Google Assistant to send the listing information to that person’s phone.
Motley Fools’ January 28th, 2018 Watch When eBay Reports Q4 2017 Earnings Report praises eBay for its quick inclusion of technological changes that have benefited its retail industry. Author John Ballard noted that “Only 12% of marketplace pages feature the use of structured data, so the company still has a long way to go with this effort that played a key role in the revenue growth acceleration last quarter”.
Fandango and 1-800-flowers also are great examples of e-commerce sites that have published statements as to how they have grown their sales volume with AMP retail pages. They also reach local consumers better with Local Business schema implementation. Know what to look for when outsourcing your eCommerce store build.
Now that we sought to answer many common questions about the efficiency of AMP pages for e-commerce sites, should you consider implementing Google AMP for your retail pages? In general, we find that the pros outweigh the cons. For research., we recommend ready Eric Enge’s article AMP Case Studies: The Argument for AMP by Stone Temple ***. To facilitate your decision we can meet with you in person.
“AMP can work really well with e-commerce sites. In fact, it can offer strong conversion advantages. Users like speed. Faster e-commerce sites will convert better.” – Eric Enge
Improve Your Mobile PPC Performance with Google AMP Pages
Mobile search technology is remaining true to its history of forcing organizations to continually face the need to adapt. Marketers who have a mindset of an expanding approach to sharpening their SEO skill sets. User preference is behind the proliferation of mobile. The rapid pace of digital innovation in Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, both small are large companies are pressed to constantly change the ways they tackle SEO.
Schema.org consists of open vocabularies showing how to add metadata to all sorts of retail web content. For AMP, the properties that make sense in context include the specific type of content (i.e. ‘news article’), the article headline, published date, and unique preview images. Avoid a spammy markup penalty by adhering to Google’s AMP rules for images.
And so, with constant changes in PPC automation, targeting, competitive levels, and new opportunities for structured data implementation, digital advertisers have an obligation to regularly adjust their approach. Without this fluid, search programs, SEO, and PPC campaigns can quickly become obsolete. Invest now in a search strategy that permits for reallocation to meet larger trends and competitive shifts so that you can enjoy a better return on your media dollars.
Some say that SEO is dead. We would say that former SEO strategies are dead. Today, better datasets for mobile performance is a fundamental facet of retail digital marketing growth and achieving your business goals. We find that businesses can’t afford to misjudge the impact of mobile advertising nor delay taking up schema and AMP as a part of their PPC strategies. E-Commerce challenges with difficult structured data implementation for multiple and similar retail product pages or lack of bandwidth must be overcome to be competitive.
If your mobile site’s loading speed is sub-par, Google AMP can be the best tool available today to improve mobile performance in the ever-increasing internet retail space. Take a look at your new Google AMP Search Console Insights for product markup errors.
Retail Accelerated Mobile Pages Optimization Services
This varies widely depending on how many products you sell. On average, product AMP page optimization starts at #3,500.00 (offer through July 31, 2022)
Hill Web Marketing helps businesses improve performance on local web pages after implementing AMP. Delivering consistently fast and beautiful web experiences that are perfect for e-commerce retailers looking to gain an edge with mobile shoppers. Call Hill Web Creations at 651-206-24510.
How we work: We are dedicated to moving our customers’ websites ahead of their local and national competition. Most people who find AMP too limiting are working with AMP plugins, which often pose issues as they are hard for some developers to keep current. Many limitations are not directly from the AMP specifications in and of themselves.
We work with professionals in the marketing industry to help make their company more successful, through the use of strong technical skills and an understanding of retail markets and product carousls. By working directly with clients on an executive level, we manage their digital marketing performance. We have clients that are thrilled with success in building retail revenue streams in the mobile marketplace. We prove this on a daily basis and look forward to earning your business and building a long-term relationship.
Conclusion
We work as a team with your existing staff or our partners. Together we offer stunning combined experiences, instincts, and tested knowledge to collaborate, innovate, and make the best decisions that impact your business revenue. We are confident that we can truly move your digital marketing efforts forward. Hill Web Marketing can make it possible for your business to switch over to AMPs for better mobile performance. We care about your brand and can accommodate any reasonable marketing budget.
Call 651-206-2410 to Update Your E-Commerce Schema
* https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/7183212, https://wearesocial.com/blog/2018/01/global-digital-report-2018
** https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6340290
*** https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/, https://www.perficient.com/insights/research-hub/the-canonical-guide-to-amp
*** www.peteduffy.co.uk/improving-click-through-rate/
**** https://github.com/Automattic/amp-wp
***** https://apps.shopify.com/rocketamp
****** https://yoast.com/structured-data-schema-ultimate-guide/
******* https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/search-gallery