Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages): Huh?

Have you seen a lot of recent articles on Google AMP and whether it is a factor or not? Wondering what Google AMP is but nobody has really explained it to you very well? Hopefully this will help.

Last year Google put together a project called AMP to help speed up the mobile experience. At a very high level (and I’m sure developers can correct me), it is a sort of stripped down version of your pages for Google to load on mobile that will speed up the load times of your pages but still present your content.

Lately Google has said AMP is not a ranking factor yet, but is that entirely true. Load time is a factor and AMP speeds up load time, so though it is not specifically a factor, if there is an easy way to attach it to yourself and boost yourself in a technical area that is sometimes difficult to boost, why not do it?

So the question for a lot of small business owners is, “is there a plugin for that?”. It is so much easier for those of you that have a site on wordpress to get a plugin that takes care of the developer side of things. At the same time, you don’t want to just throw plugins on your site without looking in to it or being sure that it won’t ruin everything else.

I don’t want to make any promises but there are plugins out there. They are mostly new because this is a new concept and we are just learning how they interact with other plugins. Fore example, when you put it in there, you want to make sure it doesn’t mess with other plugins that set your title tags, etc. so check it out and make sure it doesn’t alter how other important things on your site are handled.

For a high level view from a good developer that works with wordpress regularly, I reached out to Mirsad Capric. I have worked with him on a number of projects over the years, including my own site. Mirsad checked out “the official WordPress Plugin that supports AMP and that is being tested through Github” and had the following comments.

From Mirsad:

“Installation and set-up were fairly straight forward: The plugin essentially adds a tag on your webpage and allows you to access the “Amp-ified” content by appending /amp/ to the end of your URL.. like so..

non-amped version: http://answerkey.io/measure-twice-cut-once-digital-metrics-goals/
Amped version: http://answerkey.io/measure-twice-cut-once-digital-metrics-goals/amp/

Now, note, you do get a standard “look” on the Amp page. It’s editable, but certainly will take work to match your websites look and feel.

Hope that helps.“

Take a look at the different looks on your mobile device. There are differences but even as Mirsad mentions the style, if your page is primarily text it won’t alter it significantly and may give you that speed boost that can help push you up in the rankings. One of the most common things I’ve seen from client and prospect audits in recent months is major weaknesses in mobile speed. This should at least help that to some degree, as long as it doesn’t hurt you in other areas. If a majority of your visitors are coming to your site via mobile devices, you should stay very in tune with the latest in Google AMP.