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:

<link rel=”amphtml” href=”https://www.example.com/url/to/amp/document.html”>

And this to the AMP page:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.example.com/url/to/full/document.html”>

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