A quick guide on how to speed up AMP pages and improve mobile SEO ranking.
With the mobile users overtaking desktop, need for faster loading mobile pages is on all time high. Google understands that and that's why we had several experiments by Google like the Google Weblight and now the Accelerated Mobile Pages [AMP Project].
Improve Mobile SEO Ranking
AMP is now almost one and a half year old and still many publishers and website owners are yet to use this technology. Many of them have started using it and are competing for the best, something we should define it as AMP ranking or Mobile SEO ranking because it's only valid for mobile results. Here is how to speed up AMP pages and take your site to next level with the latest mobile SEO strategy.
How to Speed up AMP Pages
Are you ready to take your mobile SEO strategy to next level? If yes, then use Accelerated Mobile Pages [AMP] project.
If you are using AMP on your WordPress or Drupal website then you should be aware that your competitors too are using the same plugin. On WordPress CMS, plugins have made thing easy. So, simply implementing AMP might not take your site to #1 automatically.
Talking about AMP, one of the success stories that hit our quick search on Google is of Shz.de who were able to load their news articles 4x faster and were able to get 25% additional pageviews per session [Read More].
Is AMP a new SEO Ranking Signal?
A couple of years back, Google made it clear that mobile optimization and https encryption are ranking factors. You can read the official blog post on Google Webmaster Central blog.
AMP pages might not be considered as a direct ranking factor. But since it makes your website content and important elements of the page visible to the users, you are making your website mobile friendly which in turn is a ranking factor.
So, it's a safe bet to have AMP version of your site as well.
Does AMP Pages Performs Faster Than Mobile Version of Your Site?
For, TechnosAmigos.com, one of Tech blog, until January 2017, I wasn't using AMP. Infact I had trimmed down mobile version of TechnosAmigos.com to just load content and ads. I was able to generate good income but I was not following the latest trend. From my experiment, I learned that Google gives more priority to AMP page than the mobile version of your post.
Here is how to speed up AMP pages so that you can beat your competitors easily:
Serve what AMP is Intended for by Reducing Clutter
One thing you should understand here is that AMP pages are created in order to provide faster loading pages which give instant access to users for the content what they are looking for. So you should serve a page with minimum resource requests. This means that you should not be using the following things on your AMP pages -
- Disable Related Posts on AMP Pages: We love related posts, isn't it? They definitely look nice and decreases bounce rate but in order to make your AMP pages even faster, you should consider them disabling it completely. If at all you want to use it, then just show 1 or 2 posts.
- Show Less Number of Links in AMP Menu: Too many Menu links could play a spoil alert for your page.
- Disable Previous / Next Article Feature on AMP: Many WordPress themes include Previous / Next Articles section at the end of the post[below the related posts]. If you can avoid this, then it will reduce the number of requests.
- Reduced or Disable Ads on AMP Pages: You should know the fact that AMP loads content first and then the ads. So ads, doesn't slow download time. But believe me, too many ads on a single page are annoying. The same goes for AMP version of your page as well. Reduce Ads on your AMP pages to just two or three ads units.
- Turn Off Featured Images on AMP Pages: Many AMP Plugins includes featured images toggle options. If your AMP WordPress plugin has that, then turning off the featured images will be a nice option.
- Don't Use Logo on AMP Pages: It's always a good advise to use text logo instead of the abstract logo on AMP pages.
- Remove Meta Info on AMP Pages: Apart from Author name and date, I don't think other meta info like tags should be present on AMP Pages. After all you want minimal size AMP page.
- Remove Categories and Tags: As I said above, removing the category and tags from the meta info might help you to decrease the size of AMP Page.
- Less Chance of AMP Errors: By following steps 1 to 8, you will have reduced number of AMP implementation errors.
That would be enough for your AMP Page to dominate your competitors and provide your audience with the better user experience.
Let Expert Handle it
Even though AMP WordPress Plugins makes it easier to get AMP version of your site pages, it might contain some errors. Your website's AMP errors can be found through Search Console under Search Appearances > Accelerated Mobile Pages.
AMP Page Errors
The following are the common AMP issues that you can have on your site -
| AMP Error Description | Severity |
| Invalid layout property found in AMP tag | Critical |
| Prohibited or invalid use of HTML Tag | Critical |
| User-authored JavaScript found on page | Critical |
| Prohibited HTML Tag with AMP equivalent | Critical |
| Invalid CSS stylesheet | Critical |
| AMP markup missing or incorrect | Critical |
| Major content mismatch | Critical |
| Syntax Error | Critical |
| Minor content mismatch | Non-Critical |
| Use of deprecated tags of attributes | Non-Critical |
| Add AMP structured data | Non-Critical |
These critical AMP errors need attention. If you are a blogger, then your best chance to get your issue resolved is through WordPress community support.
It's always a nice advice to hire experts to handle this kind of issues. They are the one who can speed up your AMP pages so that you can dominate your competitors.
Use of AMP Ads
For starting AMP has one goal - to make content load faster on mobile for a better experience. This however not only applies to content but also to ads and other elements of a website. For a normal AMP page, the ads load only after content.
Google recently announced AMP for Ads [A4A] and AMP Ad Landing Pages, although this technology is in the early stage of development. With A4A, your native banner ad will load much faster. Just see the official example below -
Frederic Filloux in a blog post says that Google AMP is a mobile ads revolution. With AMP ads you will be able to load your ads with the same speed as the content.
This Content was last modified on March 9, 2024 6:47 PM