AMP vs Responsive Design? Mobile SEO

[AutoEurope]

Hello !!

We are developing a new website with responsive design. As is recommended, the idea would be to have a unique site for mobile and desktop, with same content and same url for both devices, using responsive design to adapt the layout depending on the device.

My doubt in here is about the AMP pages?

If my website has responsive design, perfectly optimized for mobile do I need somehow AMP pages?

As far as I understand, these amp pages would be useful if I had different pages for mobile, but this is not the case.

Am I correct or am I missing something?

Thanks for your help :

[bridget.randolph]

Hi Niall,

AMP is not the same as responsive design. It is a different format for mobile content which removes even more of the "extraneous" stuff in favor of a streamlined, simple design which Google then caches and displays from within a search result page (without the user ever needing to go to your website to view the content). The primary use case is for publishers to streamline their articles and other content, but AMP can also be used for other types of page (including ecommerce, although this is a newer development).

The pros of AMP include: faster load times, getting your content featured in article carousels, and potentially ranking benefit;

The cons of AMP include: creating separate versions of your mobile pages, removing certain elements to streamline the content, and the potential loss of traffic actually landing on your website.

Eric Enge has just put out a blog post here on the Moz blog all about this topic: https://moz.com/blog/amp-digital-marketing-2018

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Niall

It's true that AM pages are served from a different URL than the original page so the best advice is to Canonicalize back to the source page.

Just add this to the Amp page header

This avoids any duplication of content causing issues.

Regards

Nigel