Categories: AMP

AMP is now key for mobile SEO

In October I wrote about Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) an initiative to dramatically improve website load times for mobile devices and hinted at its likely impact on mobile ranking as Google was one the players. AMP has arrived.

AMP diagnostics now in Search Console

Google Search Console (previously ‘WebMasters Tools’) has released a new section under Search Appearance dedicated to AMP diagnostics.

If its in Google Search Console it Matters to SEO

My strong suggestion is that as Google’s SEO toolset now has these AMP settings, AMP is no longer some fluffy geek concept, but in fact should be seriously considered to maintain or improve your business website’s mobile ranking in Google going forward.

Mobile ranking is important for Onlines Sales

There’s very few market segments where mobile is not critical to online sales and for a while now Google ranks mobile searches and desktop searches independently. So if your marketplace uses mobiles when searching, then ideally your business site should maximise its mobile ranking to be seen by prospective clients.

Of course you could just throw money into online advertising to compensate for your website’s poor organic position too….

AMP = Fast Mobile = Google Goodness = Sales

Google has made it abundantly clear that fast is good so expect to see AMP compatible mobile searches to float to the top of search results and non-mobile compatible, and non-AMP sites disappear into the ranking depths.

AMP and WordPress

If your website, like the vast majority of websites today, uses WordPress implementing AMP may not as painful nor as expensive as you might think.

The folks from WordPress were part of the project that created the AMP standard and there’s already some early plugins and themes to ‘AMP up your site’.

Automattic AMP Plugin

As an experiment I’ve installed the Automattic (the folks behind WordPress) AMP Plugin in my site. You can see my previous AMP Post load as AMP amazingly fast here

Clearly there are limitations at this early stage, and the Automattic AMP plugin currently only processes posts – not pages. I’ll continue fiddling and report any relevant things here.

What should you do now?

Well I wouldn’t wait for my competitors to get their sites AMP’d that’s for sure. Speak to your web developer about what’s involved to implement AMP for your website. If they aren’t sure, I’m happy to speak to you or them to help out.