The world has gone mobile.
But, as a marketer, simply investing in mobile optimization for your website isn’t going to be enough to stay on top of the trend.
Mobile device users spend hours a day on their phones, and they certainly won’t navigate your content if your interface is slow-loading, clunky, and not finger-friendly.
Enter Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), a new project that taps into open-sourced technical components that promote speed and ease of use for online content readers, while allowing you to retain the integrity of the content you want to feature.
Meaning, rather than requiring your team to build out the technical functions of your page, AMP feeds your content through an existing page network that is meant to increase speed and reduce loading time on mobile devices.
Basically, every article will be viewed through a stripped-down HTML standard page, immediately available to users in a “carousel”-like format, prominently featured at the top of most mobile search pages.
That being said, AMP isn’t suitable for every page. Rather, as it is now, it is meant for article publishers who want to deliver their content to readers quickly. Because of this, technical specifications are set by the AMP system, so you’ll have limited use of other features, such as Javascript – an essential component for page elements like web forms.
SEO Benefits of AMP: Accelerated Mobile Pages
While AMP pages will enrich the mobile user experience, it can also be a huge benefit to your marketing and SEO. Below are the reasons:
1. The biggest reason AMP content will get an SEO boost is because these pages show up on the Google News carousel – which is given priority above-the-fold placement on mobile searches.
Therefore, being featured as an AMP page means more attention; you can be sure that as more and more companies sign up to publish their content, the more important it will be for you to be on the AMP network.
2. Loading time is a major factor in your SERP ranking; not to mention, your average mobile user won’t wait for more than six seconds for a page to load. Therefore, the faster your page, the higher you rank and the more your content gets seen.
It goes without saying that AMP pages will give articles a boost in results, and with Mobilegeddon still hanging over the head of marketers, the chances are that Google’s future updates will prioritize mobile-friendly media even more.
3. Bounce rate: Not only will speed have your readers staying on your page for longer, but it will also help reduce your bounce rate. While it may not be the most important SEO ranking factor, a low bounce rate helps validate to search engines that your pages offer what they say they say offer and that your audience finds them helpful.
Focus on AMP for your articles and blog content, and you’ll start to see your reader retention rates soar.
Pages that are Using AMP Today to Rank High on Search Engines
Major publishers have now been using AMP for several months, and their success can easily become yours.
We’ve checked out the results for some of the today’s top searches to see how helpful AMP can be:
Search term: Election 2016
Everyone is talking about it, so how can you get your topical content seen? AMP’s top stories feature pieces from The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, CNN, and more.
Search term: Google AMP
Whether niche topics or general, Google’s AMP lets you join the discussion with maximum visibility; just ask Search Engine Land.
Search term: 2016 Olympics
International event coverage is poised to get a huge boost from mobile searchers with AMP, and USA Today, People, The Guardian, and more are ready to take advantage.
Search term: Kim Kardashian
Mic, Cosmopolitan, USA Today, and POPSUGAR are ranking at the top of the search results for Kim Kardashian – even before her biography page.
How to Get Started with AMP in WordPress
If you want to give your mobile users immediate access to your valuable content and boost your SEO at the same time, getting started with AMP is easy.
The first thing to keep in mind is that you will actually have two versions of your page – one that is the original from your page, and the other that is hosted on the AMP network.
But don’t worry, WordPress has already made it easy for you to install AMP on your site with a simple plugin that you can download from here.
Once you download and install the plugin, converting your pages to AMP is surprisingly easily – simply add /amp/ to the end of the page (e.g. sevenatoms.com/blog/amp/).
Validate the AMP version by pasting the URL within the Omnibus and adding “#development=1” at the end of the URL. If the AMP plugin is installed, you will get the message – AMP Validation is successful.
This should get your content up and running as AMP, although since the plugin is still being developed, keep in mind that there may be a delay between implementing or changing pages and the time that they show up on the AMP network.
Also check: Google AMP: What Bloggers Need to Know
There is also a popular & alternate plugin developed by the Magazine3 team & it’s called Accelerated Mobile Pages
So, what are you waiting for? Install AMP on your WordPress blog and give your readers one more reason to love your blog.
If you have already installed it, how is it working for you? Let us know in the comments below.
Great post Harsh! AMP plugin also allows to configure it for Google Adsense. Thus a great chance of making money through Fast AMP Enabled WordPress Sites.
AMP is boon for both users and website owners. AMP is indirectly a ranking signal as it helps in faster loading of a webpage. The users tend to click more on AMPs as compared to normal pages.
Dear sir,
I am running a WordPress blog and would love to install AMP. Since i am a non techie, I really do not understand many terms. Is is possible for you to share a step by step process to install AMP in a WordPress blog? Thanks a lot.
You just have to install the plugin and it will take care of everything for you.
I would recommend you to use this plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/accelerated-mobile-pages/
Regards,
Ahmed
I too had the same question. I’m from the technical background but my expertise is in Mainframes :). HAHA, where I can fix most of the major issues easily. I understand most of the things on WordPress, but I am afraid if something very technical comes up then whether I will be able to solve it or not. But as you said, this plugin will take care of most of the things then its really great for the non-technical people who are running a website/blog. Thanks a ton for building this awesome plugin.Appreciate your work.
Thanks Harpreet, I’m so glad to hear! We are actively supporting and updating this plugin. I will be very happy to have you as our user.
Hey.tina..it’s a very nice and informative article.now after read this i will enable amp plug in on my website.really like this information.wating for your next article
AMP project is a very good initiative by Google to empower blogger like us..!
Thank you for informative article!
Hi, After installing the AMP plugin, I have got the error :”Missing URL for attribute ‘src’ in tag ‘amp-img’.
” in Google Search Console. I ended up uninstalling the plugin. Do you have any idea how to fix the error? Thank You.
Hey Himadri Saha,
Please try https://wordpress.org/plugins/accelerated-mobile-pages/ plugin and let us know your feedback.
Regards,
Ahmed
Hi Ahmed, I have already installed the plugin. But after installing the plugin I am getting error in Google search console. The number of indexed pages are zero. Not sure what is the problem.
Search Console takes the time to re-crawl and show the latest stats. Give it a few days.
Does AMP also helps in increasing the score in “Google’s Page Speed Insights” Mobile Speed Score?
Hi Tina,
I wonder, if AMP is a ranking factor. Though AMP helps in improving website when it is accessed via mobile, so the SEO benefit must be of the site speed factor. Also, i have never heard from Google about it. I may be wrong, and thus i need your confirmation on this.
Either way, Nice article and keep up the good work,
Thanks for the appreciation!
I’ve already shifted my WordPress blog to AMP , using the same method. But I’m unable to validate errors without disabling plugins that rewrites my blog to https.
I just enabled the AMP for my blog. Hope I will get better result for mobile search in future. Thanks for the nice share.
Hi Tina,
Yes, I heard about AMP but don’t have proper information about it, recently when I am accessing Google search from Android mobile it is showing so many websites in this style, I thought they are from Google news but after reading this information I came to know that these are AMP web pages.
I think these AMP are very useful for SEO and sends us a lot of traffic to our blog, especially news websites can leverage this method.
I really enjoyed your writing style, step by step guide about implementing AMP is also good, thanks for sharing this valuable information.
Oh Finally i found a post related to Mobile optimization,the steps are looking little bit tough but i apply these steps soon in my website.
Thank you very much for sharing new feature which will help promoting our blogs. It will help a lot in SEO and i am going to use it right away as i want to improve my bounce rate which is keep on increasing i do not know due to which damn reason.
Thank you so much mentioning Accelerated Mobile Pages plugin ( https://wordpress.org/plugins/accelerated-mobile-pages/ ).
We have received a great feedback from the WordPress community. We cannot wait to get the feedback from SML community as well 🙂
Regards,
Ahmed Kaludi
AMP Project plugin only creates AMP content but does not automatically display it to your users when they visit from a mobile device. That is handled by AMP consumers such as Google Search.
great article tina , the world has gone mobile
TINA madam, yes as India’s most places have a poor internet connection, accelarated mobile pages can be a solution of this slow connectivity problem. AMP will help to load fast. Thanks for sharing this great article with us.
Hey,
Wow!! This is awesome feature. No reason, to do not apply. I was wondering about AMP from last few week. Thank you for this detailed information. Now I understood well that how it can be helpful for me, so today I’m going to get started with AMP. Also, I’m looking forward to see how it will have effect on ranking, Adsense earning and other important things, possibly I’ll make sure do share.
Very informative information,I have already enable AMP on my blog…Thanks for sharing.