Accel­er­at­ed Mobile Pages, or AMP, have made head­lines recent­ly – includ­ing com­ments from Google’s Gary Illyes at SEJ Sum­mit. There, Illyes report­ed­ly said AMP will only keep grow­ing and will like­ly roll out to prod­uct pages on sites like Ama­zon – and it could even even­tu­al­ly be a mobile rank­ing fac­tor.

Google announced AMP in Octo­ber 2015, say­ing it was an open source ini­tia­tive that sought to improve the per­for­mance of the mobile web by mak­ing pages with rich con­tent work along­side smart ads and to load instan­ta­neous­ly.

“We also want the same code to work across mul­ti­ple plat­forms and devices so that con­tent can appear every­where in an instant – no mat­ter what type of phone, tablet or mobile device you’re using,” Google said in the blog post at the time.

As a result, AMP can help improve user expe­ri­ence, dri­ve con­ver­sion and increase rev­enue, and help to yeild a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. But it also pro­vides anoth­er lens through which mar­keters can view con­tent strat­e­gy and exe­cu­tion.

Here’s what AMP means for con­tent – and how SEOs and brands alike can best cap­i­tal­ize.

How could AMP affect content?

Per Brock Mur­ray, web mar­ket­ing spe­cial­ist at SEO and PPC firm Seo­plus+, AMP is most impor­tant for pub­lish­ers, where arti­cles can be fea­tured promi­nent­ly in carousels, and less so at this point for brands that don’t have con­tent with com­pa­ra­ble urgency.

Bet­sy McLeod, a con­tent mar­ket­ing spe­cial­ist for dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Blue Coro­na, agreed.

“For news out­lets and ecom­merce sites, [AMP] means Google is prac­ti­cal­ly hand­ing them the keys to high­er web­site traf­fic, and you bet­ter ful­ly inte­grate your site – or at least the main content/news pages,” she said. “For oth­er sites, it’s not as imper­a­tive or alarm­ing. It does mean a high­er lev­el of web capa­bil­i­ty, so you might see more of an empha­sis on web devel­op­ment.”

But to say AMP is irrel­e­vant for non-edi­to­r­i­al con­tent is an over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion. In fact, Jake Ben­nett, CTO of “mod­ern agency” Pop, said AMP’s rel­e­vance varies by brand and con­tent type.

“For a larg­er news orga­ni­za­tion or clients con­stant­ly releas­ing con­tent-heavy arti­cles with lit­tle inter­ac­tiv­i­ty, AMP-opti­mized pages could make sense,” he said. “For more immer­sive site expe­ri­ences or expe­ri­en­tial sites with a short shelf life, it may not make sense. There will also be a clus­ter of sites in the gray zone, where AMP pages might make sense to use, or it may make sense to just opti­mize the mobile respon­sive expe­ri­ence of that page.”

Marc Nashaat, dig­i­tal PR man­ag­er at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Pow­ered by Search, con­curred most brands don’t pro­duce enough con­tent to take advan­tage of fea­tures like rich carousels in search results, but he said lever­ag­ing AMP is nev­er­the­less a good future-proof­ing prac­tice.

“If you have sta­t­ic pages that nev­er change, like a ser­vice page that’s not rich in media or does­n’t incor­po­rate adver­tis­ing, then AMP real­ly isn’t nec­es­sary,” Nashaat added. “On the oth­er hand, if you’re reg­u­lar­ly pro­duc­ing con­tent rich in images, video or data, then AMP is def­i­nite­ly some­thing you should be con­sid­er­ing.”

And, Nathaniel Torvik, mar­ket­ing direc­tor of SEO and Inter­net mar­ket­ing firm Site Strate­gics, added, AMP may be a good moti­va­tion for brands to recon­sid­er the way they deliv­er con­tent – and to poten­tial­ly con­sid­er greater empha­sis on more newsy con­tent to ensure it is indexed with AMP con­tent.

In addi­tion, AMP more heav­i­ly stress­es the user expe­ri­ence – and, McCloud not­ed, com­plete­ly changes the way web­sites are cod­ed in the process.

“Right now, every web­site that’s opti­mized for user expe­ri­ence comes with all sorts of bells and whis­tles – dynam­ic con­tact forms, suped-up images, you name it. It’s become stan­dard think­ing that if your web­site doesn’t have these com­pli­cat­ed bells and whis­tles, your user expe­ri­ence isn’t that great,” she said. “AMP revers­es all of that. It’s a com­plete­ly new way of think­ing about web­pages and what mat­ters in the user expe­ri­ence — first and fore­most, speed.”

As a result, David Erick­son, vice pres­i­dent of online mar­ket­ing at PR firm Kar­wos­ki & Courage, said SEOs will have to have frank dis­cus­sions with their clients about their con­tent strate­gies. And that includes how com­fort­able brands are hav­ing con­tent pub­lished by third par­ties.

“While, as of now, this is only a con­cern for those con­sid­er­ing Face­book Instant Arti­cles, keep in mind that it is a short jump from Google AMP to Google Posts, which is cur­rent­ly being test­ed with celebri­ty influ­encers,” Erick­son said.

In addi­tion, SEOs will have to dis­cuss con­ver­sion strat­e­gy for AMP and Instant Arti­cles.

“Both pro­to­cols strip down con­tent to its mobile essen­tials, so com­pa­nies will need to rethink the user flow, where calls to action are placed and test for effec­tive­ness,” Erick­son added.

And, of course, there’s image opti­miza­tion.

“Clear images that effec­tive­ly deliv­er the promise of con­tent are essen­tial on mobile devices, so cre­at­ing AMP- and Instant-Arti­cles-spe­cif­ic images to per­suade users to click is like­ly an addi­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tion – and cost – for SEOs,” Erick­son added.

The future of AMP?

Mar­tin Har­ri­son, direc­tor at copy­writ­ing ser­vice Copi­fy, agreed AMP means con­tent cre­ators will have to work hard­er than ever to cap­ture read­ers’ atten­tion with “killer head­lines and images, as well as con­tent that is struc­tured for quick and easy skim-read­ing.”

And Ted Poli­tidis, senior SEO man­ag­er of EMEA at West­ern Union Inter­na­tion­al Bank, also not­ed an impact in ana­lyt­ics as brands may want to have AMP pages fall into their mobile traf­fic buck­ets, but they may also want to track them sep­a­rate­ly by estab­lish­ing a sep­a­rate chan­nel as “AMP pages” and set­ting up an auto­mat­ed sys­tem that pro­duces AMP pages each time new mate­r­i­al pub­lished.

Final­ly, Clau­dia Pen­ning­ton, tech­ni­cal search strate­gist at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Web Tal­ent Mar­ket­ing, advised SEOs and their clients pay close atten­tion to mon­e­ti­za­tion as AMPs are sim­ply addi­tion­al ver­sions of already-opti­mized con­tent.

“Brands and mar­keters alike should con­sid­er the pur­pose of AMPs before they pro­ceed. Ad plat­forms have been slow to respond, so ads don’t often appear before a user scrolls through an arti­cle. Thus, there is an impact on rev­enue and clicks,” she said. “Poor per­for­mance of ads placed with­in arti­cles is a major prob­lem for brands and mar­keters and until ad plat­forms improve load time, rev­enue and click-through rates for ads with­in AMPs will like­ly be low­er than ads with­in oth­er ver­sions of arti­cles.”