AMP – How to Implement Accelerated Mobile Pages in Word Press
First of All, What is AMP?
AMP was created to provide a great user experience across many different platforms. The problem it tries to solve it the fact that users expect a fast loading experience, rich graphics, and a smooth scrolling website. Unfortunately, many of the components of a normal website compete and conflict in manners that are counter productive to these goals. For example, large, uncompressed images take long to load, analytics tracking scripts take time, social sharing widgets, ads as well as other items can interfere with loading. In order to overcome these problems in a smaller processing computer such as a mobile device, accelerated mobile pages can help.
In order for a page to become an Accelerated Mobile Page, it must be stripped down to only the core elements of the page. This is accomplished through three areas:
AMP HTML: A rebuilt version of the HTML provides a new list of AMP-based directives.
AMP JS: All external resources are allowed to load asynchronously through a new AMP Javascript structure specifically for mobile pages.
AMP CDN (Content Delivery Network): This grabs the AMP pages and caches them for super-fast loading.
Ok, now that you know what AMP is, let’s talk about why AMP is good for SEO…
Fast Page Load Times Positively Affect SEO Rankings
Because AMP pages have been tested and found to load four times faster and use eight times less data than a traditional page (Pinterest Engineering Blog), it is fast and easier for smaller processing units like the miniature computers found in cell phones. Since Accelerated Mobile Pages load faster on mobile browsers, and mobile devices are being used in a majority of searches, the shift towards AMP is an obvious choice.
Not to mention AMP is good for visitors as well as publishers. People love fast pages and fast pages allow visitors to consume more content, which is good for publishers.
Now Let’s Get Started with AMP for WordPress SEO!
The first thing to do is implement a simple WordPress plugin like Automattic’s AMP plugin.
After activation the plugin will create an AMP version of your blog posts that are more likely be indexed by Google and served to mobile visitors instead of the original version. Why is this a good thing?
AMP Pages Load Super-Fast and Google Loves Fast!
After the AMP pages are active on your website, you will see a reference to the AMP version of the page in the code of the page. I looked at the post SEO Benefits of Google Search Console. In the page source code I found this line of code:
<link rel=”amphtml” href=”https://www.phillymarketinglabs.com/blog/seo-benefits-of-google-search-console/amp/” />
This bit of code is exactly what I was hoping to find. Now Google knows where to find the AMP version of the page and can serve it as a result to a mobile visitor.
Next We Want to Validate the AMP Page
1. In Google Chrome, add the following text to the end of the AMP URL:
#development=1
2. After adding the text to the end of the URL, refresh the page.
3. Now, right click the page. Select Inspect from the pop-up menu. This causes another box to open on the right.
4. Select Console at the top of the new box.
5. Refresh the page once more. It should look like the below photo at this point.
If you are not using Chrome and refuse at all costs to install it and test your page this way, go here instead- https://validator.ampproject.org/, enter the URL, and check it. It should work just as well. Now, one last thing on the list…
Check the Structured Data in Google’s Structure Validation Tool
Go here- https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/
and then enter your publish AMP page URL. Hopefully, you get all green lights and you are good to go. Some editing of the plugin template could be in order if the tester is giving back errors.
