Step-by-Step Guide to Set Up Accelerated Mobile Pages in WordPress

If you want to set up Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP, in your WordPress website, you’re in the right place. AMP is an approach by Google to make faster web experience for mobile users. Google announced the AMP program in October 2015 and successfully launched it in Feb 2016. In accordance with this project, Google started using AMP as a parameter (Indirectly) in order to how they will index your website.

As this project made it necessary to set-up AMP for the websites, let us know some rudimentary facts about it and learn how to invoke it in your WordPress website.

What is Google AMP?

AMP is an acronym used for Accelerated Mobile Pages. It is an open source framework based on HTML, which can be used for creating quick loading web pages for mobile users. The main function of this feature is it can speed up your web page without causing any effect on the website’s rich content, as in for videos and ads.

The main focus of AMP is the super fast loading of a web page. In a nutshell, it is that function of a website where it only shows the essential content of the web page and skips all those elements which make it slow.

However, there is no direct link with the ranking of the website yet there are many indirect ways it can affect your website’s rankings. We all know that faster loading of a website always makes the visitors happy as a flower. This is a start and when start is good, there are most probable chances of high-level visitors engagement, which eventually increase traffic on your website. As it satisfies the visitor and keeps them interested, there is increased probability of users to revisit your website.

Pros and cons of AMP

Now, to be very frank, I don’t see many cons in Google AMP. It is understandable that if you’re giving a website a fair amount of speed, there will be a reduction in some of its visual components. Still, let me not be biased and provide you a list that will give you a clear idea of pros and cons of the Google AMP project over a website and its experience.

➕ Accelerated Mobile Page will help you to rank higher in SERPs.
➕ Using AMP will improve UX for your mobile users with slow connections.
➖ AMP is as we know a limited set of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This limits certain features such as you cannot use any dynamic script such as Facebook alike boxes or Optin Email forms.
➕ It has a very friendly support with Google Analytics.
➖ However, it has no support at all for many other Analytics platforms.
☑ This similar concept is with the advertising options.
➕ The number of mobile users is increasing which is why Google AMP has an astounding effect on your WordPress website.

Step-by-step guide for setting up AMP in WordPress

First, you have to install and activate the AMP Plugin powered by Automattic. After activating the plugin, you have to head to, Appearance→ AMP to take a look how your website will look while accessing it from a mobile device.

If you want, you can change the color of the header background and text. FYI, whatever color you use for the header background, that will be the color of the links on your WordPress website. Once you hit Save button, you can check your single post by visiting directly to your post. All you have to do is add /amp/ at the end of your post’s URL. Just for demonstration purposes, the link will be like this:
http://example.com/2017/05/your-blog-post/amp/

This address will show you the stripped AMP version of that post.

The interesting fact of this is, if you go to the source code of your original post, you’ll see this line,
link rel="amphtml" href="http://example.com/2017/05/your-blog-post/amp/" This line will inform the search engine and other AMP utility about the location to look for the AMP version of the page.

Troubleshooting

What if you see a 404 error when trying to view AMP version of your website? Follow these steps if such thing happens.

Just visit Settings→ Permalinks in your WordPress Admin area and click on the “Save Changes” button. Remember, that do not change anything there, just click the button. This particular action will refresh the permalink structure of your WordPress website.

Search for AMP in Google Search Console

You can easily check how your WordPress website’s AMP version is working in Google Search. For this purpose, you have to use Google Search Console.

Log in to the dashboard of your Google Search Console and then go to Search Appearance→ Accelerated Mobile Pages. After this, it will show your AMP data in the Search Console.

There are chances where you might not be able to see your Website’s AMP data. Sometimes there are chances when Google takes the time to index your website. So, have patience and wait.

Customizing and extending your WordPress AMP website

Before going any further, I want to make this very clear: AMP comes with very limited customization option. So, in order to extend these limitations, you have to use other WordPress plugins, which allows you to add few more customizations.

If you’re a Yoast SEO user, then install and activate Glue For SEO & AMP. This is an add-on plugin for “Yoast SEO and AMP plugin.” After activation, all you have to do is go to the SEO→ AMP option and configure the plugin settings. This setting allows you to enable AMP support for different post types.

You can use the design tab to choose color options and design options, as well. This tab enables you to upload your logo and if your post is without featured image you can upload a default header image as well.

With the Analytics tab, you can add your designated Google Analytics ID.

You can also add related posts, social media icons, and footer widgets with the help of many other plugins. However, before going to any add-on plugin, you must validate your AMP pages. In order to do that, you can follow this link to know more about the validation of the AMP pages.

I hope this article gives you all the information about the AMP and how to set it up. If you like the article and you have some questions or confusion or additional information please, mention them in the comments and I will get back to you as soon as I can. Till then have a good one.