Ultimate Guide To AMP and What It Means For Your Site
AMP - you've probably heard about it. You may have even seen the AMP logo in Google. But what is AMP all about and what does it mean for your WordPress site? Find out in this article
What is AMP?
AMP is short for Accelerated Mobile Pages (you can see why they shortened it to AMP now, can't you?). AMP is a project from Google that is effectively a stripped down lightweight platform for mobiles. Websites are getting more media heavy by the day, and mobile data plans are still expensive in most parts of the world leading to high data charges from poorly optimized websites. AMP aims to change all that.
At its core AMP is simply a stripped back version of HTML.
Certain tags aren't allowed, CSS is streamlined, and you can't just use any old JavaScript you'd like. You have to use a JavaScript library that they provide you with.
The general idea behind AMP is pure speed and readability. Many sites now use sliders, crazy fonts and a bunch of other stuff that is just noise. AMP strips all that back and brings readability and speed back to websites on mobile devices.
While the impact on SEO is still up in the air with no one entirely certain on how it's effecting their rankings, Google is showing AMP accelerated articles and marking them as such in search results and seems to be displaying AMP articles above non-AMP articles when searching on mobile.
Should You Use AMP?
Deciding on whether you want to use AMP or not depends on which type of site you have. AMP is primarily designed for articles and news site. It isn't designed for just your general small business website.
Technologies similar to AMP
You may have seen talk around all these types of technologies. In 2015 Facebook unveiled Facebook Instant Articles. The general premise is the same as AMP. However, unlike AMP which is used on your own website, Facebook instant articles is a way for publishers to publish fast interactive articles directly on Facebook, giving a different slant. Depending on your site you may even want to go with both! Learn more about Facebook Instant Articles here.
As well as Facebook Instant Articles, Apple released Apple News. Unlike Facebook Instant Articles and AMP. Apple News is a news aggregator App that is installed on all new iPhones by default and replaced Newsstand. A publisher can register to add their content to Apple News opening up a whole new ecosystem of interested readers. Just like both AMP and Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News is stripped back with a focus on speed and readability.
Making Your Site AMP compatible
Since the release of AMP. AMP plugins and AMP compatible themes have become big business. Some of the available plugins include:
WP AMP is a premium WordPress Plugin for adding AMP compatibility to your WordPress powered site. Available on CodeCanyon for $39. Out the box, the plugin has built in compatibility for page builders and WooCommerce integration. There's also a built-in page builder specifically for AMP pages and posts along with an AMP API.
AMP is an open-source plugin created by Automattic (the owners of WordPress.com). Out the box, it is lacking in most features when compared to other plugins but does it's initial and core job well. Only posts are supported, with no page support, or direct page builder support. There are also multiple occurrences of it failing to work for people completely, though quite often it's down to incorrect configuration and poorly coded/supported themes.
Along with the range of available AMP plugins, there is also a range of AMP supported themes out the box.
One such available theme is called Onfleek and has AMP support out the box. One of the benefits of using an AMP supported theme that has been built and designed around AMP is that you know it'll work. You aren't trying to shoe-horn in functionality into a website or theme that was never designed to offer such functionality. Though if you use a well-coded theme, the chances are that any of the AMP plugins available should work perfectly fine.
Do remember though that by using AMP plugins and adding AMP support to your website, that when visitors view your articles and possibly pages depending on the plugin, you use, they won't see your usual site. While this seems fairly obvious, there are many support threads for different AMP plugins where site owners can't figure out why their pages and site design doesn't follow through to mobiles.
If you've had a site designed with mobiles in mind and have it exactly as you want. The chances are you wouldn't want to use AMP anyway. While that may be fine for now. AMP is gaining traction, and if you run a news site it may be a good idea to look into adding AMP support to your existing site to make sure you retain your search rankings and position.
Verdict
AMP is a great way to improve the usability and readability of your website to your dedicated, loyal readers and to find new readers. Making your site clean, simple and fast on mobile is only a plus. All those fancy features never worked that well on mobile anyway.
Have you used AMP on your site? Maybe you've found the best AMP plugin to use or have a horror story of an AMP plugin that was meant to work perfectly but broke your site? Let us know in the comments below.
Jack Kitterhing is a WordPress developer from England. His love of WordPress began at age 11 when he set up his first blog. After a stint as WPMU DEV’s Project and Quality Assurance Manager, he’s now a Software Developer at Themeco.