SEO – Presto Carol

Accelerated Mobile Pages

Purpose and how it works

Serve pages FAST on mobile devices. Stripped-down pages load quickly because of less data and cached on Google servers.

AMP pages are displayed only when clicked on from Google search results, and only to mobile users.

Your AMP should offer a user experience equivalent to the corresponding non-AMP page, as much as possible

Google favors AMP pages

Backlinks to AMP pages found through Google search won’t transfer any link equity to your site

Limitations

AMP HTML: no forms allowed.
Limited JavaScript. All CSS must be inline and is limited in size.

It’s not clear why can’t an AMP page link to non-AMP page that contains the form: “”AMP pages must be recognized as being fully isolated. There is no navigation to the rest of your site, nor is there support for your homepage, blog indexes, etc.” Really? Doesn’t this rule break the web?

How important is it for WP theme to be AMP-compliant? All the standard templates are plus Genesis Framework and two Genesis child themes. Docs claim other themes can be made compliant with minimal changes

AMP pages’ enhanced load speed and boosted search rankings come with an ironic trade-off: backlinks to AMP pages found through Google search won’t transfer any link equity to your site.

Strategies to implement AMP:

Use WordPress AMP plugin

Code your AMP pages by hand, as separate pages, and served from a folder within the main website (my untested idea)

Steps for WordPress and how it works:

Install the AMP plugin, configure for reader mode (another mode codes ALL pages as AMP)
https://wordpress.org/plugins/amp/
Install Yoast SEO plugin if not already there
Install the plugin “Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP”
– might be needed to config AMP for more than single post pages
Create your AMP
– create AMP pages in AMP HTML
– set your AMP link strategy
– create the two canonical links in the <head> section of both pages via Yoast
Add structured data to enable AMP-specific features in search results e.g. in top pages carousel – step might be optional
Add structured data to enable AMP-specific features in search results.
Check your AMP and fix problems
– AMP must be valid in order for Google to accept/index
Update the Google Cache for your AMP – get your AMP onto Google servers
– How? And, Google cache is part of why pages serve so quickly
Check AMP at Google Search Console
– Search Appearance > Accelerated Mobile Pages
– it may take some time (how long?) for your AMP to appear

Some Details:

How to tell Google there’s an AMP variant of your web page? We add information about the AMP page to the non-AMP page and vice versa, in the form of <link> tags in the <head>.

Add the following to the non-AMP page:

And this to the AMP page:

AMP URL scheme: Your AMP URL scheme should make sense to the user.

Canonical page:

https://urban.realtor/myarticle

AMP options:

https://amp.urban.realtor/myarticle
https://urbanlrealtor/myarticle/amp
https://urban.realtor/amp/myarticle
https://urban.realtor/myarticle.amp.html

Tutorials:

WPBeginner: brief introduction, there’s gotta be more, such as how to update Google cache?
– set “reader” mode if you want to set up a limited set of AMP pages, for the most important or most visited pages
– focuses on changing APPEARANCE of AMP – why?
– Yoast plugin? will set up the canonical URLS

amp.dev: Specifics for implementing AMP outside of a CMS, should be helpful in using WP AMP plugin

Getting Started with AMP on Google Search: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/enhance-amp

Codelabs: Seem like tutorials to learn AMP, E.g. the AMP Foundations “lab” is here:
https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/accelerated-mobile-pages-foundations/#0

Tools and Resources:

Validate AMP pages: article is here: https://amp.dev/documentation

AMP test tool is here: https://search.google.com/test/amp

Validate structured markup on pages: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool

https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-properly-disable-google-amp-in-wordpress/:

– Google does not penalize websites for not using AMP.
– alternatives: improve your website’s speed and performance on mobile to compete for mobile search audience

How to Add Links to Your Facebook Posts

An effective promotional post would include a sentence or two (call to action) and an image illustrating your message that linked to a spot to read more. But how to do that? Here’s the best I can find TODAY:

A Facebook post in progress — Facebook builds a “Link Preview” if you type a space character after your link.

Prepare your link, message, image, and start your post.
Suggested image size is 560 pixels wide. It will be displayed at full post width, so set the height with that in mind.
Write your message in its entirety, followed by your link and a space
The space will trigger a “link preview” (see picture on right)
Editing a Facebook post: options to upload a photo
The link preview appears to take text from the web page’s meta description tag, and let you cycle through a few images from the page. You can’t edit the meta description part of your post.
If you don’t like any of the pictures or the meta description, you can remove one or both using the tiny faint “X” upper right. That leaves you with the text of your post and an option to UPLOAD a photo.
Facebook ready to post

I don’t see a way to use a photo already existing at your Facebook account. So you must upload from your browser/PC.
The only way to close the image window is to hit the blue “Post” button lower right.

A Facebook post with a link and a photo — Finished Facebook post, containing a link and a photo.

To the left is the resulting post. My link goes to the URL shown, the photo goes to … not the link, but to some details about the photo.

To summarize, if the page you link to generates a Facebook link preview that you like, visitors may actually click through to your call to action page. If the page you link to doesn’t generate a suitable link, you can upload a photo that may draw visitors’ attention, but only the most dedicated visitor will seek out the tiny text of your URL and click it.

What is your experience creating Facebook posts with links?

I took my screenshots, and described my experience, using Facebook as of April 25, 2017. Have you noticed any improvements since then that you’d like to share?

How Facebook can be a Conduit to your Website

Our chief Facebook poster at Santa Clara FireSafe Council taught me a communication method today, that I’ve shared with my budding Facebook team at Bicycle Exchange. She says it’s a way for Facebook to be a conduit to your own website. Or any link you want to promote. Maybe this technique will help you too.

Postscript: I believe the ideal link would be words or a picture that link to the action page. However Facebook will only let you post a “link preview” it builds from the page; or you must spell out the link and upload a photo from your browser/PC. The photo can only link to the Facebook photo comments panel. As described in my tutorial.

Our Facebook team at Bicycle Exchange has used this “conduit” technique to recruit more volunteer bicycle mechanics. For example, Ivan has created a post that links a photo to our website’s “Contact” page. Here’s the technique I learned:

1) Identify the action you want the person to take as a result of the post.

2) Identify the photo which describes the action, event, news or fact.

3) In a sentence or two describe the thing and summarize the action you want the reader to take.

4) Link the action words, or the photo (or both?) to … something.

5) The “something” in our case can be a page at the Bicycle Exchange website.

Continue reading How Facebook can be a Conduit to your Website