Accelerated Mobile Page is a new addition in the web development world. It is not only beneficial in terms of development but also beneficial for the SEO. It has two benefits for the SEO that are listed below:
- It is having a “Fast” label position on the SERP.
- It is one of the ranking factor.
In the following blog, we will be looking at the way to use it and how it can be beneficial for your mobile visitors:
What Does AMP Mean?
You might have a question in your mind, what does AMP mean on website? It is an open source coding standard used by the publishers. The purpose to use it is to help the website to loader faster on the mobile devices. This needs to be done because the mobile responsiveness can be slow due to the heavy and plenty resources of desktop. Furthermore, one should be clear that most of the desktop elements are useless for a mobile site.
Previously, AMP was just to enhance the User Experience but now Google favor those websites who are implementing AMP. Do you know, what is AMP google results? No need to worry, we will be explaining this here. Google is now encouraging website to make their web page scalable to the mobile devices and they should load faster as mentioned above according the update rolled out in February 2016. Google has officially added the AMP listing to its mobile triggered search results.
Why is AMP Important?
Did you tried to load your website on mobile? Are you satisfied with its loading speed on mobile device? These are some of the questions that you should ask from yourself. If your mobile website is not loading faster, then you are losing many potential customers that results in low sales. You need to optimize the website loading speed on your mobile.
Now, it is very essential to optimize the mobile experience for the user because Google wants the same. So, if your planning to improve your ranking to benefit your SEO, then you need to make a good mobile version of your website using AMP.
As the SEO element is attached. You might be wondering is AMP a ranking factor? Yes, surely it is. As mentioned above. If your website is not shown on mobile and does not load faster this will affect your ranking. Google will not rank your website higher and as a result your SEO will suffer a lot. Want some help related to your website or its responsiveness?
Who Will Get Benefit from AMP?
Most of the people are not aware of the AMP and they may not be thinking to implement it on their website due to many reasons. But here are some websites that will get benefit from AMP.
The publishing sites that are producing content will get most benefit from AMP. If you are having one of those website, then you don’t need to apply the AMP on the whole website. You should only implement AMP on the client’s blog section, update sections, and news.
This need to be done because a very large percentage of the visitors uses their mobile devices to view the content on the website. So, if your website content is not available for the user due to the scalability issue with mobile devices, then this will create problem for your business. Moreover, this will also affect your SEO, thus increasing your website bounce rate.
Websites That Prefer Loading AMP
We will be explaining this point with an example. Try to open an article from Twitter using a native mobile app. You will notice that Twitter is having its own browser and it will not load faster enough. But if you are utilizing the AMP, then you will see that the website will load faster even when opened via Twitter’s native browser.
Difference Between AMP and Non-AMP Mobile Browsing
One of the essential difference that exists in AMP pages are not having much stuff for a complex user experience. The important elements present in the AMP mobile browsing are listed below:
- In AMP you will get a streamlined version of CSS for the usage.
- Forget about JavaScript in the AMP. This a problem and you might be figuring out how to make share buttons appear on the AMP pages.
- You will only be using of-the-shell JavaScript library provided by the AMP. Due to this your images will load at low speed.
Hope, now you are clear about the difference between AMP and Non-AMP pages. In short, when you are adding AMP to make your mobile pages responsive, then you are putting the readability and speed on top of your priority list. Everything else is put behind even the share ability.
How to Use AMP for your WordPress Site?
Here’s an interesting thing, you only need 5 minutes to embed AMP pages in your WordPress site. You need to take following five steps to do the work:
- You need to install the AMP WordPress Plugin.
- Now you have to activate the plugin and it will attach AMP on all your pages but it will not redirect mobile visitor to your AMP pages.
- Next, you need to attach .htaccess file. You can use FTP program to get the work done. You can use the FileZilla for the task.
- To check that your AMP pages are working or not? You need to paste the following code in your .htaccess file. This step is optional.
“” RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/amp$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (android|blackberry|googlebot\-mobile|iemobile|iphone|ipod|\#opera\ mobile|palmos|webos) [NC]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)([\/]*)$ https://example.com/$1/amp [L,R=302]””
You have to place the name of your website instead of example.com. If you don’t want all your links to pass on your AMP pages, then you can redirect it to 302. The reason is, it is merely an accelerated mobile page version.
- In the end, you have to edit the CSS to make your website look similar to the AMP pages. You can edit the CSS using FTP by visiting your wp-content plugins à AMP à template.php
If you are planning to make your AMP pages work for a non-WordPress website, then you need to do more than just installing a plugin. The task is not easy but it will be more rewarding. You need to go to AMP projects sites and learn how to add it via hard-code. Contact our web design agency in Boston MA for all web design and development work.
Hope you have a better understanding of AMP and its importance. You need to pay attention to this because it is one of the essential SEO hacks in 2019. You can’t let your website to be only scalable to a desktop version. It should be readable, responsive, and scalable to your mobile devices too. Furthermore, if you are looking to get advice regarding your website development, then you should contact a professional company like TNIT for the help.