Setting up a WordPress AMP Compatible Website

Setting up a WordPress AMP Compatible Website

Accelerated Mobile Pages (in short AMP) is an open-source website publishing technology backed by Google. It was launched in 2016 with the aim to speed up the content delivery on mobile devices.

AMP uses AMP HTML code to make a website load faster on all types of mobile devices. Today, millions of web owners have been using it to offer better user experience and boost their web traffic.

If you want to get benefit out of it but don’t know how to setup Google AMP on your WordPress site, read this article till  the end. We will show you how you can you create WP AMP-compatible pages via simple methods.

There are two popular ways to set up AMP for WP website.

Method 1

You have to simply install the plugin as you do with any other WordPress tool. Go to ‘Plugins’ menu, select ‘Add New’ and search for ‘AMP’ or ‘Accelerate Mobile Pages’. You will see AMP plugin by Ahmed Kaludi, Mohammed Kaludi. Hit ‘Install Now’ button and then click ‘Activate’.

As soon as WP installs the plugins, the button will automatically turn into a blue one. Once the plugin is activated, you will be taken to the main ‘Settings Page’ where you will see an option to begin the setup wizard.

Hit on the ‘Run Installation Wizard’ button.

Now you will move to the next screen where you will be asked to create a logo which identifies your AMP-friendly pages. You may pick the default logo as well as it is easy to notice.

Next, WordPress will ask you for ‘Where you would like to enable AMP’. You have following options.

  1. Homepage
  2. Category & Tags
  3. Posts
  4. Pages

Since audience will be interesting in reading your post, we recommend you to choose the ‘Posts’ option only.

As you can see the following screenshot, on the next screen you will be asked to setup ‘Google Analytics’ support for your AMP pages. You simply need to add Google Analytics tracking code which you can get by accessing your Google Analytics account.

You can find it under the ‘Property Menu’ where you have to click on Tracking Info->Tracking Code. You can find your tracking ID at the top of the page.

In the next step, you have to pick a design for your AMP pages. There are 3 design options, you can pick anyone you find great. All 3 templates are attractive and clean. So we guess you should not be confused between them.

If you feel you need to change the design of the header of your AMP Pages, you can do so from Design-> Header Tab.

Once you’re done with all the primary settings of AMP pages, now all you have to do is wait for search engines to index them.

Method 2

  1. This method is fairly easy you just need to login to WordPress.org and search for ‘AMP plugins’ by Ahmed Kaludi in the ‘Plugin’ menu. Next ‘hit’ the download button to begin the downloading process.
  2. If you’re having difficulty in finding WordPress AMP. You can directly download AMP plugin from here.
  3. Next, again you have to access WordPress Admin panel. Go to Plugins->Add New-> Upload Plugin->Choose file. Select the downloaded zip file of AMP plugin and click on ‘Install Now’ and then ‘Activate’. You will find the following message:

Click on ‘Begin Installing plugin’ to start the installation process. It may take a minute or two.

Note: To extract the downloaded zip file, you may also use Filezilla.

How to Know If you AMP Pages are Working Properly

There are plenty of ways you can check if your AMP pages are working accurately or not! However, we suggest you use Google’s official validation tool i.e. https://search.google.com/test/amp. Since AMP is a Google-backed project, you can’t find a better tool than to evaluate the speed of your AMP pages.

You simply need to go through 3 steps to use this tool.

  1. Simply access the home page by clicking on the above URL.
  2. Enter a link to your WordPress AMP page.
  3. Hit ‘Run Test’ button.

Let the tool evaluate your page. If your page complies with Google’s standards, you will see the following success message:

On the contrary, if the page you have entered is not as per the Google’s standards or AMP-friendly, you will find the message much like as below.

Don’t panic if you receive the 2nd message (Not an AMP Page). AMP tool will let you know exactly where are you making a mistake so that you can fix it without any delay.

The best part of this tool is it comes with handy AMP guidelines  at the bottom of the screen. You can go through this tutorial to know more about AMP and its functionality.

In case, you’re looking for a comprehensive guide on how to set up AMP on WordPress, (along with benefits & downsides) you can check out the post at 000webhost.com.

Checking for AMP Errors Via Google Webmaster Tool

If Google identifies an error your AMP page that page will not be seen in the Google AMP cache. Nevertheless, there is a way you can find that error and fix.

Follow the below steps.

  1. Access your Google Webmaster Tool.
  2. Choose your website.
  3. Go to the option Search Appearance->Accelerated Mobile Pages.

Here you can see the exact AMP errors for your website and fix them accordingly.

Final Words

AMP is an exceptionally amazing tool to boost mobile SEO of your site and provide an easy interface to your mobile audience.

Besides this, AMP enables pages to load 4 times faster than standard pages which means you need not to be bothered about bounce rate of your website as well.

All in all, we can say AMP can help you stay on the top of search engine results by offering your mobile audience a better online experience.

Still thinking about installing AMP on your site? Stop thinking and start doing! If you have any suggestion on setting up the AMP on a WordPress, feel free to share with us in the following comment section.