Install AMP on WordPress - 6 steps guide

Install AMP on WordPress - 6 steps guide

AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages is a brand new technology developed by Google in the last two years has grown in popularity among webmasters and business owners because it just loads their web sites up to 80% faster compared with normal website design.

AMP technology is similar with Facebook instant articles or Apple news. The only difference is, AMP pages will get indexed in Google's Mobile Index.
For the ones of you that don't understand this yet, below you can find an example of AMP results in a mobile search:

As you can see the AMP text and icon are clearly visible to any AMP result. This will increase clickthrough rate and with CTR your rank will increase. So you might say that AMP is an indirect ranking factor for SEO and search engines in general.

Now, SEOclerk's custom AMP allows them to implement AMP pages for service pages as well as implementing cool structure data so that cool results like that one above will be achieved.
The following tutorial for implementing AMP will be oriented towards WordPress users. You don't need to be a programmer to implement AMP for a WordPress based website, you just need to follow my guide and everything will be fine.

1. Install SEO Yoast plugin.

If you aren't using Yoast as your main SEO plugin I suggest you switch to Yoast. The thing you will need to do later on will be way more simple if you already have Yoast install and configured on your current WordPress setup.

2. Install and activate AMP plugin from Automattic

And DONE you already have an AMP version for every post on your site. You can check the amp version from a desktop browser by putting "/amp/" at the end of every post, though seeing it on a desktop is highly ugly and not recommended. I personally use my smartphone to test everything.

Keep in mind that you also want to configure certain aspects of AMP, like having a custom logo, custom tags, certain menu and all that stuff. You will also want to have AMP on your pages not only your posts. For this to happen AMP plugin from Automattic isn't enough, you need to install one more additional plugin.

3. Install and activate AMP for WP – Accelerated Mobile Pages By Ahmed Kaludi and Mohammed Kaludi

This is one of the most helpful plugins you can find out there! Seriously, it can save you a ton of time and even money if you don't really need to develop a custom AMP version.
It has a full guide on how to configure everything based on your needs, website features and design. With the help of this plugin, you can also implement Ads on your AMP pages version. When configuring this plugin you will also notice the importance of having a configured Yoast on your blog, it will make stuff easier and merge everything nicely together.

4. Install Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager on AMP

This is fairly simple. Just go to the Analytics tab and choose the way you want to process, by using Tag Manage or just inserting the Google Analytics ID fo your site. I personally chose the second option and I had no problem tracking my AMP traffic later on.
Note: You can find your GA ID in Google.analytics -> account -> property -> tracking info -> tracking code - will always start with "UE".

5. Additional Implementations and configurations


This AMP plugin has loads of options. This is why I consider it to be the best. You should go through all of them, starting with general settings, ensuring AMP will be custom implemented just the way you want it and need it.
Just to name a few of the options you will have:

• The ability to implement a custom logo.
  
• The option to implement AMP on all pages.
  
• Page builder tool.
  
• Design options - you will have the ability to disable/enable all AMP design elements.
  
• Ads - you can add ads on your AMP pages.
  
• Custom Menu - you can choose if you want the plugin to implement an automatically generated menu for AMP pages or you can build one yourself from the Menu feature in WordPress.
  
• Social Media - you have loads of social media options and features making sure people are able to share on whatever platform you want them to share.
  
• SEO - As as said, it is for the best to have Yoast SEO already installed, nevertheless this plugin is giving you options to implement some custom SEO features.
  
• Structure data
  
• Notifications
  
• Comments settings
  
• Translation Panel - Highly important if you want to implement AMP on a non-English website. Here you will have all the tools needed to translate everything into your native language. I personally did this myself translating stuff in Romanian.

6. Is your AMP page valid? Index it!
Once everything is up and running you need to test everything with Google AMP validation tool found here: https://search.google.com/test/amp
Make sure you enter your AMP URL with the "/amp" at the end. Otherwise, you'll just gonna test a non-amp version of the site.
In the end, this is what you will want to see as a result:


As well as this:


Once Google validates your AMP page you will want to submit your AMP version to Google for indexing.
You can do that by hitting the "Submit to Google" like in the print I've listed above. The confirmation should look like this:

You can also submit for indexing AMP versions pages from Search Console, under Google Fetch.
Also, make sure you regularly check Search Console from now on under Search Appearances -> Accelerated Mobile Pages - this section of Search Console will single any AMP errors or issues Google might find as well as the number of good AMP pages indexed in Google.

Have fun getting all that new organic traffic from AMP pages! Check your analytics and constantly analyze how your users interact with the AMP version of the site. A bigger bounce rate than usually is normal.
You may also experience AMP traffic as a "referral" source, this happens when users that landed on your AMP pages switch to non-amp.

If you have any issues or questions regarding the process and guide I presented here let me know in the comments bellow!