How to install Google AMP in WordPress And what is it?.
Few things are more frustrating than visiting a website when you find that its home page takes a long time to load. It’s even worse when the images are of poor quality and the layouts are poorly optimized.
In fact, a Google study found that 53 percent of people leave sites that don’t load in three seconds or less, resulting in a high bounce rate and lower revenue.
To address these issues, Google has created Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). AMP not only speeds up your website’s load time, but it also helps you create an engaging website, an engaging mobile experience, and increase your average CTR.
In this guide, we’ll explain why Google AMP is Google’s preferred format for mobile pages and how you can implement AMP for WordPress.
What Is Google AMP?
Google AMP is a web components platform launched in October 2015 for building and building user-centric lightweight websites. The mobile initiative is designed to speed up your web experience by serving a stripped-down version of your web page.
Many large companies, including WordPress, Pinterest, Washington Post, and Reddit, have adopted AMP and have experienced an increase in monthly unique visitors.
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When your web page is displayed to mobile users via AMP on Google, it will look simple and simplistic to achieve AMP’s goal of lightning fast, dynamic performance and improved usability.
Do You Need AMP on Your WordPress Site?
AMP is fast, but it’s not the only way to make your web pages load faster or speed up your site.
There are many case studies that demonstrate the positive impact of AMP on publishers, businesses, and other industries, but there are also many examples of failed research. This means that there is no one-size-fits-all decision whether AMP is right for all sites or not.
What seems to be true is that the success of AMP depends on several decision factors. For example, if your users are primarily computer-based, AMP is not for you because AMP pages are not rendered with advanced features on the desktop and are not served from the AMP cache, so users might not enjoy these benefits.
The golden rule is that AMP is recommended primarily for publishers with news sites and blogs. For anything else, such as a portfolio site or landing pages, AMP is optional.
Also, if your non-AMP pages can load in 2.5 seconds or less, you probably don’t need to install or support AMP.
How to Implement AMP on a WordPress Site
Building an AMP version of your WordPress webpage might look like a task that only developers can handle, but with a little knowledge and some guidance, you can do it yourself.
Google has a workflow to help you create an AMP page, integrate and optimize it, set up analytics tracking, and then design the page to suit your site’s needs.
To get started, Google will provide you with the template code, which you can copy and save in the .html extension, and then add the markup as needed. This will turn the page into a working AMP HTML document.
Before publishing, you can enable images, change the layout, optimize the page for SEO, preview and complete pages using the instructions in the sidebar.
If you like, you can experiment with AMP on the amp.dev home page before trying it out on your own WordPress site.
How to install Google AMP on WordPress
Manually setting up and installing Google AMP on your WordPress site is tricky. However, you can use plugins like the official AMP plugin for WordPress, AMP for WP or AMP WP to make the process easier.
In this guide, we will show you how to set up and install AMP on a WordPress site using the official WordPress AMP plugin.
How to use the WordPress AMP plugin to install AMP
- First, install and activate the WordPress AMP plugin on your WordPress site. Go to your WordPress dashboard, choose Plugins> Add New.
- Enter the AMP plugin in the search box and select Install Now to install the plugin.
Note. If you are using WordPress.com, you need to upgrade to the Business plan to install any plugins.
- Go to Plugins> Installed Plugins, find AMP and select the Activate link to activate the AMP plugin and make it work on your site.
- After activating the plug-in, configure the settings to customize AMP pages. To configure the plugin, go to AMP> Settings and use the wizard to configure the AMP page settings.
- When you are finished customizing, click the Publish button. Your site will not be visible to visitors or discovered by Google, but you can choose whether you want pages, posts, or both to appear on your AMP site. To do this, go to AMP> Settings> Advanced Settings and uncheck Supported Templates for more options.
- Select the options you want, and then click Save Changes.
- You can also integrate Yoast SEO into your AMP setup by going to Plugins> Add and then search for Yoast SEO and AMP.
- Select Install Now and activate the plugin. Upon activation, go to SEO and select AMP for more customization options for your page, then select Save Changes.
- Before publishing, preview your AMP site by adding amp to the end of any post or page URL. For example, you can go to https://yourwebsite.com/blog-post-title/amp/
How to Validate WordPress AMP
Once AMP is installed on your WordPress site, the next step is to verify that it is correct. Not only that, but validation also ensures that supported platforms can access and link to your site, and you can find AMP errors for troubleshooting.
You can test WordPress AMP manually or using Google’s AMP Testing Tool.
- To do this, open the AMP page and then add # development = 1 to the end of the URL of the web page you are testing.
How to check WordPress AMP manually
- Go to your browser and open the developer tools console. If you are using Firefox, select Menu> Web Developer> Web Console. If there are errors on the AMP page, they will be highlighted in red.
Validation errors can be caused by incorrect code, invalid prefixes, or illegal tags, but you will see an explanation of why next to the error.
- Open the Google AMP Test Tool page, enter the URL for your site, post, or page, and then select Test URL. You can also paste the site code and select “Check URL”.
How to Validate WordPress AMP Using Google AMP Test Tool
- Googlebot will analyze your site and, if valid, you will see a preview of how your AMP pages might appear in Google search results.
With Google’s AMP Testing Tool, you can identify AMP errors and see the code causing problems on your site. You can also click the Share button to share the analysis with your colleagues.
You can also use the Google AMP Validator tool to make sure your code is validating, or you can use the Chrome AMP extension, which also validates pages and shows any warnings or errors.
AMP up Your WordPress Site
Google AMP is a big change for any site, especially if you already have a lot of mobile traffic. If you have a site with news content, it might make sense to install AMP right away, but for other businesses, you may want to lower conversions if you’re wrong.
We recommend testing AMP on a few high traffic pages to see if you get positive or negative results before deciding to use it throughout your site.
Have you tried AMP on your WordPress site? Do you have any other tips for using AMP for WordPress? Share with us in the comments.
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