If you keep up on the latest SEO trends, you may have heard about AMP. In this post you’ll learn how AMP works to deliver your blog content faster in mobile search and which plugins you need for WordPress Accelerated Mobile Pages.
What is AMP?
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a Google initiative to get web pages to load much faster on mobile devices. With AMP, Google serves up a stripped-down, cached-version of your content from their own servers to your mobile visitors. Stripped down means that AMP limits some elements of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. This accelerates delivery of content to mobile users; in other words, blog posts load faster.
Why AMP in Google Search
“In the USA, 94% of people with smartphones search for local information on their phones. Interestingly, 77% of mobile searches occur at home or at work, places where desktop computers are likely to be present.” [source]
So the majority of users coming to your site are probably on a mobile device. Google cares about improving the search experience for mobile users. So much so that Google’s primary index is the mobile index not the desktop index.
When a page or post is slow to load, users click away. Google considers this a failure to deliver a good search experience. For this reason, AMP content will rank higher in Google mobile search results pages. As Yoast says:
“Google is giving prime real estate to AMP pages in mobile search results, and if you don’t have AMP on your site, you’re not getting any of that traffic.” — Yoast
AMP in Mobile SERP
In the mobile Search Engine Results Page (SERP), the AMP icon indicates that these search results will return the AMP version—not the Responsive Web Design version.
WordPress Accelerated Mobile Pages Compared with Responsive Design
Check out the screenshots below before you jump ahead and install and activate the WordPress Accelerated Mobile Pages Plugins suggested below. First, realize that AMP will change how your posts display on mobile view.
Compare the AMP and Responsive Web Design screenshots of the same post. In the AMP version,
- the site’s logo has been replaced with an AMP site icon
- the site navigation and WordPress widgets have been removed
- the author’s gravatar and when post is from is displayed below the post title.
The AMP Navigation bar
- The address bar at the top of the AMP post clearly shows that the server is google.ca not from our site.
- Clicking on the X will take you back to the Google search engine results page.
- Clicking the link icon will direct visitors to the responsive web design version of the post.
- Click on the three stacked dots reveals a More info link that takes you to a Google search help page about AMP.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Google ranks #AMP posts higher in mobile. Get Accelerated Mobile Pages for #WordPress #SEO pic.twitter.com/HcfucwYjyC” quote=”Google ranks #AMP posts higher in mobile. Get Accelerated Mobile Pages for #WordPress #SEO“]
Plugins for WordPress Accelerated Mobile Pages
To get AMP for your WordPress site, install and activate these 2 plugins:
- Automattic AMP plugin – https://wordpress.org/plugins/amp/
- Yoast SEO AMP Glue plugin – https://wordpress.org/plugins/glue-for-yoast-seo-amp/
Now go to the SEO → AMP settings menu, design tab, and change the styling to fit your brand and to add an AMP site icon. Please note: Currently website pages are not supported by the AMP plugin—only posts.
Now, your WordPress blog posts will enjoy a higher ranking in Google mobile search because they are mobile-friendly, faster for mobile users and because Google ranks Accelerated Mobile Pages higher.
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