Hello friends,

In my last post I presented to you one solution that might be useful for both Facebook’s instant articles and Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). In this post the focus will be on the latter and I will present to you the current plugins that will allow your website to provide such content.

But first things – first! Let’s see what AMP are and why we need to optimize our websites for them.

The Accelerated Mobile Pages is a project that will provide a faster and open mobile web. So if we are to compare them to the Facebook’s instant articles they are basically identical – both projects want to provide mobile users with extremely fast loading of web content on their devices and in the mean time to keep the focus on the multimedia in this content.

However the major difference is that Facebook’s instant articles are designed for the Facebook’s mobile application only while the Google Accelerated Mobile Pages is a project that aims to serve Google users while searching the web via their mobile devices as well as the integration of the AMP project to multiple platforms.

So the main points behind the AMP project are:

• Speed – web pages with rich content should load instantaneously when browsed from a mobile device;
• Smart Ads – the rich content should work alongside with them in order to provide a better mobile browsing experience;
• Multiple plaforms and devices – the AMP project should allow the content appear everywhere instantly without taking into consideration the type of the mobile devices you are using (phone, tablet, etc);

Why we need to optimize our content for AMP?

This is a project that Google stands behind. If you are trying to optimize your website for better position in the search results then you are obliged to take the AMP optimization into consideration when planning your SEO strategy. There is already a section in the Google Search Console regarding the state of AMP content on your website and if there is none you should be getting errors/warnings. Sooner or later the AMP will be mandatory and I will not be surprised if there will be an update that will penalize all pages that are not accelerated for mobile devices.

So now that you are familiar with the AMP project let’s see how we can integrate it on WordPress.

In my last post I described Page Frog as a solution for both Facebook’s instant articles and Accelerated Mobile Pages. So the first option for your WordPress website is installing and activating this plugin and then follow the instructions in order to get your content optimized for AMP. Again you will be presented with a preview of what your posts and pages will look like when they are prepared for accelerated loading on the mobile devices.

This plugin is quite handy and many users are happy with it. However providing AMP content does not mean to forget about the genuine On-page optimization and integration of specific meta data in order to get your website indexed and better positioned.

And here comes the first problem – Yoast SEO users might have problems while integrating Page Frog with the SEO plugin. According to Yoast you might experience browser crashes when using the two plugins together and this will prevent your from creating great content and staying focused. Not to mention the possible data loss which might occur on such crash. It is extremely rare to happen but why to risk it?

That is why Yoast recommends using a combination of two other plugins:

• AMP by Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) and
  
• Glue for Yoast SEO and AMP
  

So the total number of SEO plugins will be 3 when you count the Yoast SEO plugin as well. This might seem uncomfortable at first sight since we all know that having too much plugins on one WordPress website might cause loading speed reduction and other potential problems.

Nevertheless everything should be OK and Yoast are making tests and keeping us informed on their website about the progress regarding AMP integration. And to calm you down – they will be providing an AMP feature in their main plugin Yoast SEO soon. In the mean time we all have to wait until this happens and to use the current 3-plugin solution.

Now let’s see how to use it – install the AMP plugin and when you activate it you will be provided with an AMP version of your content if you add /amp/ to the end of the post’s URL. And when you install and activate the Glue for Yoast SEO and AMP you will be provided with a proper connection to the Yoast SEO plugin and thus you can be sure that your accelerated mobile pages will be using the proper On-page metadata.

Simple as that.

What should we do now?

I will once again share my personal intentions regarding these new optimizations – I will wait a little longer before optimizing my content for AMP and Facebook’s instant articles. The reason is that I consider both projects to be young and they might need to be tested and developed further. So while waiting I will be keeping an eye on their development and I will be paying special attention to the connection to WordPress as well. Also I will be making local tests as well. And sooner or later I will optimize my content for AMP and Facebook’s instant articles.

However if you want to start doing this right now you already have two great solutions that will aid you. Don’t forget to keep an eye on the Yoast website for more information about AMP and to take into consideration the future guides and tips that they will be providing for all of us.

And also don’t forget to share your experience with the rest of TheCMSPlace’s community.

That’s all for now friends. I hope that you find the presented solutions for AMP suitable for your WordPress websites.

See you soon!