If you spend a lot of your day in Google Search Console, at the beginning of the year you may have noticed a little something pop up under the “Search Appearance” drop down – a tab called ‘Accelerated Mobile Pages’.
Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP, is an open source project that aims to speed up webpages on mobile devices. It allows users to visit a page on your site instantly by rendering much faster than a typical HTML page. Essentially, it supplies the user with a stripped down version of the HTML called AMP HTML.
The project was initially announced in October 2015 but it has only recently started rolling out in UK search results – so if you want to get ahead of the game then you should be implementing this as quickly as possible.
The benefits of AMP
Google is continuing to increase its focus on usability as a ranking factor. Combining that with its obvious love for mobile search, showcased by the release of the Mobilegeddon update early last year, AMP just seems like the obvious solution to improving users’ mobile experience.
Although Google has not specifically stated that AMP is a ranking factor, we do know that page load speed and mobile friendliness is a factor.
AMP is guaranteed to vastly improve your load times, and it strips elements of the page that potentially aren’t mobile friendly.
So, when you put two and two together, AMP is a ranking factor.
If that’s not enough to sway your hand, Google has even thrown in a little green lightning bolt – if you’re clutching at straws, it could very marginally increase click through rate.
Still don’t believe in the powers of AMP? Well, a picture is worth thousand words…
Non-AMP page:
AMP page:
How to implement Accelerated Mobile Pages
If you don’t have a WordPress, Drupal or Magento CMS, AMP can be a bit trickier to implement. You can find the full required mark up on the AMP Project site.
How to implement AMP with WordPress:
All you have to do is download the AMP plugin. Once you have done that, you can access the AMP version of your pages by adding /?amp at the end of the URL. For example:
edit.co.uk/blog/the-technical-seo-audit-complete-guide/
After installing the plugin, will be…
edit.co.uk/blog/the-technical-seo-audit-complete-guide/?amp
How to implement AMP with Drupal:
You can also implement a module in Drupal which, once installed, acts in a very similar way to the WordPress plugin.
Simply install this module from https://www.drupal.org/project/amp and AMP URLs become available; you just need to tag /1?amp and ?amp onto the end of your current pages.
How to implement AMP with Magento:
Unfortunately, the only extension I can find in Magento costs $99, so if you understand the benefits and can easily implement the mark-up stated on the AMP project site, it may be worth using this method.
You can find the extension in the Magento Connect store. Again, all you have to do with this extension is install it and add ?amp1 on to the end of your URLs to ensure it is working.
Once you’ve implemented the Accelerated Mobile Pages plugin, extension or module, it should then be picked up automatically by Google Search console through the rel=”amphtml” tag that is left on the page. If you have any issues or errors on these page, it will be flagged in the same place.