The AMP project was announced by Google in October 2015 and successfully launched in February 2016. According to this project, Google will consider the mobile version of your website while determining that how it would be indexed in the search. The main aim of this project is enhancing the mobile web experience for the users. As this project has made it necessary for the web developers and publishers to set up AMP for their website, let us provide you a brief introduction on the concept and on the setup procedure for that.
Set Up Accelerated Mobile Pages
What is AMP and why it matters?
AMP is an abbreviation for Accelerated Mobile Pages. It is HTML based open-source framework that is used for creating fast-loading webpages without sacrificing the rich content, like ads and videos, on them. Instant loading is the main focus of AMP. To say it in simple words, AMP is that version of your website which contains only the essential content and skips all the extras which make your website slow. Thus, the visitors don’t need to wait for up to 20 seconds.
Though technically AMP has no link with the ranking of the website but it contributes towards ranking, indirectly. As the faster loading of the pages makes the visitors happy, they keep on reading your content and engage with it. And this, in turn, brings more traffic to the website as satisfied users are always interested in revisiting the website. Learn more Google SEO Updates
Setting up AMP on your website
If you have made responsive websites then you would be well aware that how complicated the process is. But, the good news is implementing AMP is not that much difficult; it is easier than you would have thought it to be. Here are the steps to implement AMP in WordPress.
Install the AMP Plugin
The first thing you need to do is installing the AMP plugin. It will make your pages AMP friendly. The AMP plugins work with the WordPress posts only; it does not work with custom posts and pages. It means only your website content would be delivered, no customization will be enabled. However, the AMP plugin is easy to install and activate.
Install Plugin for the customization
As mentioned above, the AMP plugin will not let you add a logo, ads or to do any other customization to your website. And the AMP pages will look different from rest of the website pages. So, you need to install a plugin that would allow you to do some modifications to your website’s pages. Though this plugin is provided by different development companies but the one you can trust is the Yoast Glue Plugin.
The Yoast plugin will not only allow you to customize the AMP pages to match your website’s other pages but will also allow you to integrate the meta-data into those pages and to do other customizations. Follow the below given steps for that.
– Open WordPress dashboard, go to the Yoast SEO menu and click on AMP.
– Click on the design tab to adjust colors, upload custom icons, and do other hyperlink settings.
A thing that you need to notice here is Yoast Glue Plugin will not work if you are using any other SEO plugin. In this case, either you would be required to uninstall the Yoast and look for another plugin that would allow customizations of the AMP pages, or you can consider using Yoast SEO plugin in the place of one you are currently using.
Review pages in Search Console
Now, it is the time to log in the Google Search Console and know if Google has noticed your efforts or not. So, log into the Console, click on the Search appearance and then on the Accelerated Mobile Pages.
A graph will appear displaying how your AMP pages are indexed. Also, the errors will be displayed below the graph. You can click through to find the cause and fix those errors.
And you have done with it. The three-step process will let you install and implement AMP on your website.
