Do you want to setup Google AMP on your WordPress site? AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, designed to optimize faster mobile pages. It makes your page mobile-friendly and loads faster (web pages load in less than one second).
In this article, I’ll tell you how to properly implement Google AMP in WordPress
What is Google AMP
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is an open-source initiative project designed to improve the speed and readability for mobile content pages.
Now many popular search engines, social platforms, content management systems, and eCommerce websites support AMP, like Bing, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Twitter, Medium, WordPress, Squarespace, Tumblr, eBay, and BigCommerce.
How does Google AMP Work
Google AMP greatly reduces the use of HTML and javascript. The content of the website is stored in AMP Cache servers. When users click on content, Google provides cache content and pages load faster.
What are The Benefits of Google AMP
After installing AMP you can see huge changes to your website,
- Many SEO Experts believe that AMP improves Google Ranking.
- Makes your page mobile-friendly.
- Your site will load faster on slow internet connection.
- In AMP, you can set HTML, javascript, CSS limit but you can not add widget or features.
- AMP supports Google Analytics but it does not support other Analytics platforms.
- You can enable ads in different places for AMP Mobile Page.
But many bloggers have given their own ideas about this Google AMP. Many believe Google AMP better and many consider bad. That’s why I can not suggest Google AMP. Here I have just share Accelerated Mobile Pages settings that want to use Google AMP.
How to Setup Google Amp in WordPress
First, install and activate the Google AMP plugin on your WordPress site. This is the official AMP plugin for WordPress with robust capabilities and controls.
Features and capabilities provided by the plugin:
- AMP-first Experiences: enabling full-site AMP experiences without sacrificing the flexibility of the platform or the fidelity of content.
- Core Theme Support: enabling AMP compatibility for all core themes, from Twenty Ten all the way through Twenty Nineteen.
- Compatibility Tool: when automatic conversion of markup to AMP is not possible, debug AMP validation errors with detailed information including the invalid markup and the specific components responsible on site (e.g theme, plugin, embed); validation errors are shown contextually with their respective blocks in the editor.
- CSS Tree Shaking: automatically remove the majority of unused CSS to bring the total under AMP’s 50KB limit; when the total after tree shaking is still over this limit, prioritization is used so that the all-important theme stylesheet important is retained, leaving less important ones to be excluded (e.g. print styles).
- AMP Stories (beta): the AMP plugin enables the creation, editing, and publishing of AMP Stories in WordPress; leverage the magic of storytelling the WordPress way!
After activating, click on AMP. This will take you to the AMP Settings page. I would recommend you to use its default settings.
You can also enable AMP support for other post types (Post, Media and Pages).
Next, click on Appearance >> AMP page to customize your site for AMP version. In this page, you can change the Header Text Color and Header Background & Link Color.
Furthermore, you can also select a Color Scheme for your page. But I would recommend you to keep it light.
Once you’re done, click on the Publish button.
Now, visit any single post on your website and add /amp/ at the end of the URL. Like this:
http://example.com/blog-post/amp/
This will show your web page in AMP version like this,
If your AMP version is showing 404 error, click on Settings >> Permalinks and hit on Save Changes button without changing anything here.
Extend and Customize Your Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Official AMP plugin comes with very limited customization options.
But, if you are already using Yoast SEO, you can add a few more customizations. Just install and activate the Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP.
This is an add-on plugin for Yoast SEO. After activating the plugin, click on the SEO >> AMP to configure settings.
This option allows you to enable AMP support for other post types such as media pages.
On the Design tab, you can choose colours and design. You can also upload a logo and a default header image which will be used when a post doesn’t have an image associated with it.
And in Analytic tab, you can add your Google Analytics ID.
Once you’re done configuring the settings, click on the save settings button.
How to Check Indexed AMP Pages in Google
First, log in to your Google Search Console account and click on AMP >> Valid. You can see screenshot below,
If you are not seeing indexed AMP pages here, do not worry. It may take a while to index in Google.
Hope this article helped to properly setup Google AMP on your WordPress site.
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