What is AMP for WordPress? [Nifty Tip 01]

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5 years ago

Hi, everyone! I'm sure most of you have come across the acronym AMP or AMP for WP and might be wondering, what the blooming heck is that? This stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and WP is obviously WordPress... So what is AMP for WordPress?

AMP for WP Plugin

This is a nifty plugin you can find by searching for AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages through your site. There are a few plugins that are connected to this one, like Ads for AMP and such, and they integrate with All-in-One SEO or Yoast SEO as well.

This plugin is an AMP page builder and using it will increase your mobile website speed.

What exactly are Accelerated Web Pages?

These mobile versions are a project by Google and Twitter and a few other collaborators, apparently. They are like web pages on a diet. An HTML-light version of your site. They first appeared in February 2016. If you want the full explanation you can visit the Wikipedia article on AMP.

My Results

I increased my mobile website speed by a TON yesterday. Because I'm awesome, I thought I'd share how I did this because my mobile speed was in the RED, it was that bad. Now I'm back to green!

I wished I had thought to capture screenshots of before and after, but I honestly thought that it wouldn't increase my speed THAT much.

How much?

Using the PageSpeed Insights feature here at Wealthy Affiliate, I kept track of my speed. It uses Google PageSpeed Insights to score the web version and mobile version of your site. One particular page of mine had a mobile speed of 39. ALL of them were in the red.

Now?

Do You Need It?

In my humble opinion, yes, absolutely. AMP pages load much faster on mobile phones when the signal might not be too terribly great or for people who are running on slow connections at home. Any desktop or mobile device can open AMP pages.

There is both a Free version (which I'm using for now) and a Premium version. If you don't need the premium version yet, stick with the free one. But definitely add it to your site's plugins!

Do you already use AMP for WP? Did it help? Going to try it? Let me know how it worked for you by commenting below!

Lovies,
Selenity