Content creation is still the most powerful engine that propels every publisher forward. But in 2020 and beyond, quality content won't sustain a site on its own. The modern content lifecycle hinges on a number of things working together in unison — including page speed, intelligent SEO, and effective distribution, just to name a few.

However, there's one thing that can throw a wrench in the entire system, and that's platform updates. Whether you're publishing on a common CMS solution like WordPress, using a custom in-house CMS, have access to a dedicated team of developers, or any option in between, platform updates can be both costly and frustrating.

Updates as simple as closing a security loophole can sometimes take weeks to implement correctly, and can often prevent content creators from doing their job during the interim, thus disrupting the entire content lifecycle and costing companies money and, more importantly, users. While a platform update may seem like a temporary affair, any downtime can deliver a brutal blow. According to data from Google, 61% of users will not return to a site on mobile if they had trouble accessing it, and 40% said they would explore a competitor's site instead.

Updates That Happen Behind the Scenes

With mere seconds to make a first impression and retain readers, it's important that new functions, security updates, and even small platform tweaks are deployed seamlessly with no disruption to content creators or users.

Unlike most publishing platforms, RebelMouse was born in the age of social, and our team has had the advantage of approaching publishing solely from a modern lens. We anticipate the algorithm updates, trends, and shifts impacting the content lifecycle much earlier than other CMS options. We have a procedure in place to perform every platform upgrade with zero disturbance to our clients. In fact, many of the updates we deploy happen before many of our publishers even know they needed it.

Here are some exciting changes we've made just in the first few weeks of 2020.

Go AMP First for a Next-Generation UX + Enhanced SEO

Google's AMP format first launched to provide users a lightning-fast mobile experience with page load times clocking in at under a second. Now, Google has released that same elegant AMP experience on desktop. Combining desktop AMP with a mobile user experience is a new way to publish called AMP First.

Transforming your site to AMP First means every page on your website is migrated to the AMP format exclusively. Every visitor to one of our sites, regardless of device, is given an incredibly fast experience with rich and dynamic media that was once only possible using load-heavy JavaScript.

In early 2020, we began to roll out some of our clients as AMP First to not only further improve performance, but to give them a distinct advantage in search. While AMP isn't an official ranking factor in Google's algorithm, lightning-fast, high-performing site experiences are heavily considered by the search engine, and publishing purely with AMP skyrockets page speed to increase SEO quickly.

RebelMouse makes it easy for product managers to quickly design AMP First websites in addition to AMP mobile and desktop pages that outperform industry standards with an average of five pages per user. It's as simple as one click to enable AMP by default or implement it across articles individually.

One-click AMP integrations in RebelMouse's Entry Editor.

Read more about our AMP integrations here.

Ahead of the Industry Curve With Beautiful AMP Stories

Since the need for speed is a top priority for every publisher, the rise of mobile stories, or tappable microcontent experiences first made popular by Snapchat, have now gained even more steam with similar versions rolled out by Instagram and Facebook. Google AMP is also leveraging the visually media-rich format with its own version called AMP stories.

In January 2020, we launched an intuitive AMP stories publisher that's available right in our Entry Editor.

Click here to view an AMP story on mobile.

This new integration means RebelMouse users will now be able to publish to AMP stories using their normal editorial workflow, further extending the content lifecycle and creating new opportunities for fresh audiences.

Read more about how easy it is to create AMP stories here.

Navigating a Cookie-less Web

2020 is the year when consumer privacy and user-first strategies are essential to surviving as a publisher. Quality content has to be delivered in a quality fashion or it becomes useless.

With third-party cookies crumbling, and more regulations around how cookies are deployed, some publishers are fearful of their sustainability and overall site experience. The new regulations mean that if cookies are not set up properly on your site, they could get blocked entirely. This means huge implications for brands and publishers as they consider their site experiences moving forward.

Brands need to navigate how to maintain consistent and accurate audience measurement across channels. Our team of developers have understood the future of cookies for quite awhile, and have already implemented the updates now required, like SameSite cookie attribution, for all of our sites.

We also have first-party data strategies defined, tested, and ready to help guide our clients to make the most out of a cookie-less web. Read more about this here.

Purely Publish With No Update Upsets

RebelMouse has had a busy start to 2020. We've launched each of these new major functionalities ahead of the industry pace, and they were all deployed with no disturbance to our clients or their valuable audiences. Our agility and infrastructure allows our publishers to focus purely on creating content, and gives them the opportunity to leapfrog their competition without having to think about it. We're always working to keep our sites secure, updated, and, most importantly, modern so that sites within our network can succeed high above the noise.

Publish without disruption and get access to updates and upgrades long before you even know you need them. Request a proposal today and let's start working together.