With the number of mobile users increasing every minute, it only makes sense to invest in improving their user experience. There’s obviously an option to develop a native application for your business but, not every business has the need or budget to develop one. It shall, however, not stop you from providing better services and user experience to your mobile audience.

The two most effective solutions to your problem in such a scenario are Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMPs and progressive Web Apps or the PWAs. To help you better understand the two mobile-friendly technologies, we stand at your resort. Today, we shall talk about the key differences between the accelerated mobile pages and progressive web apps besides understanding what they are. We shall also look at the unique set of benefits they offer and which of the two is better. So, without much ado, let’s get to it.

What is Accelerated Mobile Pages?

Abbreviated as AMP, the Accelerated Mobile Pages the mobile-friendly web pages that are designed to load faster and smoothly. Launched by Google in 2015, the AMP was developed keeping the objective improve the user experience in mind. It is an open-source project that allows developers to use unique coding language and create web pages for mobile that load lots quicker than the traditional web pages. This unique coding language is the lower version of HTML and CSS without any sort of JavaScript.

In the common-man language, you can think of AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages as the fast loading yet lower version of the original web pages. Presently, the Accelerated Mobile Pages are no more limited to building web pages. You can efficiently create AMP ads, AMP emails, and AMP stories too. Let’s now explore the benefits these AMPs offer to enhance the mobile user experience.

Benefits of AMP

Following are the benefits of using accelerated mobile pages to build fast-loading web pages for mobile:

• Instantly loading pages (less than a second)
• Easily cached pages
• Supports all formats of ads
• Enhanced engagement
• 4 times faster website
• Full control over the business and visual design

What are Progressive Web Apps?

When it comes to the most convenient way to surf websites and online services, native mobile applications are definitely the most convenient platform. But that is not so much of a convenience to many online business owners. Such business owners can resort to a software product that combines the advantages of both web versions and mobile apps.

Did you ever notice that certain websites allow you to add their web version on your home screen and use the same mobile app instead of downloading the separate dedicated application? Once added to your home screen, you can now open the website as a progressive web app.

Twitter could be an example.

The Progressive Web Apps designed to enhance the website user-experience of mobile users. They look, feel, and work exactly like the native apps. The only difference between PWA and native mobile apps is that the former is not exactly an application but an offline version that is just as reliable, fast, engaging, and efficient.

Benefits of PWA

• Improved conversion rates
• Faster page loading
• Mobile-app-like experience without downloading the application
• Use lesser device internal storage
• Full-screen presentation (without URL bar)
• Better user engagement with push notifications
• Smooth navigations across the web pages
• Easy and quick access to websites via home screen icon
• Efficient functioning even in adverse network situations
• Permits offline visits/revisits

Difference Between Accelerated Mobile Pages and Progressive Web Apps

Now that you some idea about what AMP and PWA technologies are, you must find them quite similar. Both the technologies are designed to improve the mobile-user UX. The two technologies are solely dedicated to easing down the troubles experienced while visiting web versions of the websites. They are both designed to improve the page loading speed. But you must know that although the two technologies go hand-in-hand, they are quite different from one another. Here are the key differences between Accelerated Mobile Pages and Progressive Web Pages:

1.  While AMP, on one hand, is designed to improve the page loading time, the PWA on the other hand, is developed to provide a mobile-app-like experience while on the website.
2. AMP just loads and presents users with the content quickly, the PWA provides a rich user experience and engagement.
3. AMP is composed of streamlined CSS and lower-version of HTML and JavaScript while PWA contains App shell, Web App Manifest besides Service Worker.
4. AMP is a perfect choice for websites that publish more static content including blogs, articles, news, or videos whereas, PWA or Progressive Web App is befitting for e-commerce websites and platforms that require more user engagement.

Which is Better: AMP or PWA?

Both two technologies are designed to serve similar purposes. They are both really efficient in what they are used for and have their own set of pros and cons. However, if you are an online business owner aiming to your audience with nothing below best, we recommend you to support both AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) and PWA (Progressive Web Applications).

Using the combination of AMP and PWA ensures that you are not losing your visitors due to slow page load time. While the AMP shall help your visitors access all your content quickly, the PWA must keep them engaged by improving their user experience. If you are wondering about, ‘how you can use the two different technologies for your business, here’s how it shall work in your favor.

When the user attempts to access your website on his mobile phone, an AMP-enabled version of the result appears before him instead of the original web version. Once the user opens the website (AMP-enabled version), you (publisher) can engage your visitor using the app-like web version of the website. You can encourage the user to add your website as his home screen icon (Progressive Web App). It shall help you avail your users with the following experience:

1. Access to content/services while offline
2. Efficient functioning in the adverse network availability
3. App-like experience
4. Faster page load time
5. Smooth transition
6. Easy navigation

A smart brain always goes for the ground preparation before entering the battlefield. That’s exactly what we will be doing here. We will be discussing the upcoming SEO changes in 2021. You might think about why we need to get ready for the SEO changes that are yet to come. Well, that’s because advanced planning and preparation set the base for stronger comebacks, and that is exactly what we need.  

So, my dear digital marketers, get ready for the SEO changes in 2021 to change your revenues, ranking, visibility, and traffic like never before.

What Technical SEO Changes awaits us in the New Decade?

It wasn’t long ago when we learned about terms like SEO, digital marketing strategies, SERP, etc and their impact on our performance as an online business. And look, it’s already been a decade since then. Well, time flies quite quickly. The SEO trends and tactics that worked wonders back then don’t even count as a strategy today. For the better part, with countless updates in the Google algorithm, they have all lost their potential for new strategies. Some of the SEO trends are evergreen too.  

Today, the majority of the technical SEO changes and updates are to enhance the content quality, page-experience, diversity of contents, and brand image of your firm (online/offline). Merely the presence on social media platforms and an official website isn’t enough to garnish your business and attract potential customers.

You need to invest a great deal of time nurturing your presence as a business online to attract customers/audiences to choose you over your competitors. You need to sit back for a while and work upon technical SEO and other strategies to improve your presence online. After analyzing the updated Google algorithm that ranks websites on the SERP, SEO experts predict the following SEO changes for 2021.

SEO trends in 2021

• UX that holds the audience

Just as ever before, user-experience counts as the most significant factor in optimizing your SERP rankings. A good website is always easy to navigate with a great user-interface. Not just this, the website is compatible with all devices including desktops, laptops, mobile phones both Android and iOS. Think from the perspective of your visitor, it’ll help you analyze your backlogs.

It must take as little as a possible time for:

• First Input Delay
• Largest Contentful Paint
• Cumulative Layout Shift

Your user may adjust with a fraction-of-a-second delay in page downloading, but they just hate ad pop-ups, particularly the full-screen ones.

• Content Quality

To rank high in Google’s good list, you do not need to follow those hundreds of ranking factors to work on your website. Well-prepared quality content is more than enough. Your performance graph in the web browser is directly proportional to the quality of content that you post. The better your content is, the greater will the number be of visitors on your page. Satisfactory content will hold the audience for a longer duration on your page.

Neither Google nor does your audience love poorly organized content. It creates a bad impression on your behalf. Gone are the days where a small content loaded with tons of keywords ranked high. Today, you need well-structured content with a moderate frequency of KWs, focusing on LSI, FAQs, semantic search, search intent, and more to appease both visitors and Google.

Always remember, great quality content with original opinions is the evergreen king here. It is also the key ranking factor that Google takes into consideration while assigning a rank to your website on SERP.

• Search Intent

Ask yourself once, ‘Is getting huge traffic the only thing that your business needs?’

Does it not need to satisfy the users who have approached your page for certain queries?

People often end up neglecting quality (user-satisfaction) when they run behind quantity (traffic). If your website aims only to views and visits, then ‘BOOM,’ it is pretty easy to achieve if you follow some simple SEO trends. But the same becomes tough if your target is to get conversions from views and visits.

So, before you plan out your SEO strategy, be sure about your traffic intent is. This will help you work on your plans accordingly. Now is the time for you to stop chasing traffic quests and work on an actual SEO strategy for better results. This strategy includes the selection of the right KWs, promotion platforms, target audience, audience demographics, offers that customers can’t resist.

• Diverse content

How boring the webpage with only texts/video/images will be. To grab users’ interest, a website owner must load his pages with multimedia content, especially the video elements. People just love it. They tend to believe visuals moreover textual contents. The viewers also remember the same for a longer time.

Besides this, you can also go for a diverse genre to serve your audience with new content. This way, you’ll attract more new and potential audience. Work on video marketing strategies, use voice search optimization, semantic search to provide your visitors with the content they are exactly looking for. Diversified content will be the future of SEO trends.

• Reviews/ratings

Online reviews and rating work exactly like personal recommendations. About 80% of the online shoppers’ lookup for online reviews and ratings before applying for certain products/services online. You can put up testimonies of your satisfied customers. There are websites solely dedicated to providing reviews and ratings about other websites and webpages.

There will be both positive and negative reviews about you there. But it wouldn’t harm much if you and your team work with a planned strategy and prominent trends. Get ready for upcoming SEO trends and you are to get nothing but only benefits.

To win this race for the long term now, you will have to master your team in technical SEO. Not just that, you will also have to keep a watch on the changing technical SEO trends coming ahead of you. We are about to enter a new decade full of anonymous. To keep things in our favor for the best, it makes sense to prepare beforehand. In this blog, we shall talk about the Technical SEO trends to watch that will rule the digital world in 2021.

Although it’s too early to talk about the changes that are yet to come, groundwork lays the strong base to success. And under no cost, it should be neglected.

Changing SEO Trends

Search Engine Optimization abbreviated as SEO is that one marketing discipline which has the potential to raise your business from scratch to the sky and vice-versa. Mastering yourself with changing SEO trends promises you quick growth organically. Ask a digital marketer and he’ll be soaked in adapting himself to new technical SEO trends coming ahead.

Strategies that work today might not necessarily work tomorrow. The trends that seem to work excellent today may sink into anonymous tomorrow. We will thus throw light on the upcoming Technical SEO trends in 2021. While some of the SEO techniques are evergreen, some evolve and improve for the better. So, let’s get to it.

How will Changing SEO Trends Help You

What does an online venture usually aim about?

Higher rank and more visibility in the SERP, right?

Yes, that’s what everybody craves for here.

Adapting to changing SEO techniques helps you to gain more visibility, credibility, before users, and higher rankings on the SERP. This would all contribute to the overall revenue of your firm, irrespective of what it is.

The benefits of SEO techniques include:

• Organic traffic
• Better revenue
• Visibility
• Better rank on the SERP
• Improved conversion rates
• Cost-effective marketing
• New customers

Let’s now talk about the technical SEO trends to watch coming in 2021.

Trend 01: Enhanced UX

Talking about the significance of better user-experience is mandatory every time we talk about technical SEO. Here, user-experience directly talks about the user experience your audience has on your website. Good UX has a great impact on your overall website performance. UX has a big place in Google’s ranking factor that determines where you as a business stand online.

Walk awhile in your visitor’s shoes and you’ll have a basic idea about where you lack. Here are some points that you must concentrate on to improve your website UX:

• First Input Delay: It should be below 100ms so that your page loads quickly.
• Largest Contentful Paint: The largest content of your page should load within 2.5 seconds at max.
• Cumulative Layout Shift: It measures the visual stability of your page. Your page CLS must remain below 0.1 seconds.
• Mobile-friendly: The websites that respond well on mobile phones and all other devices and platforms gain more attention from the audience.
• Free from Pop-ups: You and your business may, but users never like pop-ups, particularly the ones that capture the entire screen. It annoys them to the soul.

Trend 02: Semantic Search

Just like enhanced UX, semantic search is yet another significant SEO technique that shall be trending in 2021. Do not confuse yourself about what Semantic search is. Semantic search is more about its literal meaning. It focuses on the words and their relationships with certain contexts. The Internet is a vast universe of data. Semantic search intends to use all the data at hand to determine what the user is looking up for.

Think of an instance where you had no clue about the title of some track. You just had a line of its chorus in your mind and wanted to know which song it is. But all the data on the world wide web has its original title, unlike the line you remember. How do you think you can search for that song?

You can do so by entering the lines you know in the search box and boom!

You’ll get what you were looking for. How do you think this happened.?

It happened with the help of the Semantic Search technique of SEO. To improve on Semantic Search, you must focus on:

• Content that answers your user’s question
• Write to win people over search engine
• Structured data
• Optimize topics over keywords

Trend 03: Search Intent Over Keywords

Believe it or not, people respond to brands that understands them. This is what search intent is all about. The marketers must thus, concentrate on developing content that understands their needs and intent. You must put up content that aligns with your customer’s intent. Try answering FAQs, and natural queries.

Answering queries signals Google and other search engines that your content is authoritative and has answers to what users are looking up for. 

Trend 04: Local SEO

Working upon local SEO techniques could be way better than what you expect. It is one key that could take you to the sky. People love pages that provide local access. If you have a physical location for your business, local SEO is your thing. Google My Business heavily takes into consideration local user experience.

As the demand for local searches keeps rising, Google keeps coming up with features to make it easy for users to search about local businesses. You must thus, avail FAQs, pictures relevant to your business, regular posts, and work upon providing more information about your firm. Using this information the browser makes it easy for customers to search:

• Services
• Address
• Reviews/ratings
• Contact details like phone numbers, email, and websites
• Working hours

Trend 05: Content Quality: The Untamed King of all time

Nothing works better than quality content to improve visibility on the SERP. Always keep in mind that as long as you have strong content that meets all the needed criteria, nothing can throw you down from what you aim to reach.

Make sure that your content is well-structured and has originality in it. It must have an answer to the questions that your users look up to you for. It must be developed after detailed research, using all the relevant keywords, statistics, if possible, and must be factful. Users wouldn’t trust you if your content is plagiarized or lacks what they want. Hire strong content and copywriters who give a detailed insight into the topics instead of briefs.

Trend 06: Prove Authority with E.A.T.

E.A.T. stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trust. It provides an insight that the page or the owner is professional and holds a significant post in the field. You can inform about your expertise in the “About” of your website. There you can mention what you do, how you do, and what your achievements are.  There are websites that provide users the reviews about certain websites. Proof your worth with your work. There will be negative reviews about you, once you start winning the customer’s trust there is no stopping to your success.