By: Eric Enge, Stone Temple
I recently shared the beauty AMP can bring to user experiences online. AMP can make your mobile web pages load blazingly fast, and that means a great improvement in the user experience with your site. But, what’s involved in implementing it?
One of the key factors that makes AMP so fast is that it imposes significant restrictions on how you code your web pages. You can’t be sloppy with your coding practices, and it forces you to implement pages so that you minimize round trip communications with the web server.
You can also only use the AMP-supplied Javascript library (you can’t write your own). This library is also very restrictive. In addition, even something as simple as including an image requires a special tag, the <amp-img”> tag, and you’re required to specify the exact image size as a part of that tag.
Many other basic HTML elements require special tags, such as animated GIFs, videos, audio files, forms, etc. Sadly, this means you’re on the hook to learn a new form of HTML if you’re going to create AMP pages. Unless you’re using WordPress or Drupal, in which case you’re in luck, as there are AMP plugins available for both of these platforms:
WordPress:
Drupal:
Even if you aren’t developing your site on WordPress or Drupal, the coding for AMP is designed to be quite similar to basic HTML, so it’s not that hard to learn.
One great part of the program is that AMP validation is built right into the AMP Javascript library. All you need to do is to append “#development=1” to the end of the URL you want to test, and then go to the Chrome Dev Tools Console to see any errors. This helps make the development process go much more smoothly.
As I noted last time, if you haven’t considered implementing AMP, I heartily recommend that you do so. It offers compelling benefits for users, and that can lead to a real competitive advantage!
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If you’re interested in learning more about mobile, we’re hosting a conference on April 5 in Boston called Next10x. It’s dedicated to the topic of mobile digital marketing, and includes some of our industry’s top speakers, including Google’s Gary Illyes, Larry Kim, Cindy Krum, Neal Schaffer, as well as speakers from many major brands. I’ll also deliver an opening keynote ;).
It will offer a unique opportunity to up your mobile digital marketing game in just one day. As an AMA Cincinnati member, you’re also eligible for a special discount, using the discount code: AMAC2017. Learn more and register here. I hope to see you there! Otherwise, I’ll see you at the upcoming Signature Speaker Series on April 21.
About Eric Enge
Enge Eric was named 2016 Search Marketer of the Year (Male) at the Landys, and 2016 Search Personality of the Year at the US Search Awards, and Stone Temple Consulting was also named Best Large SEO Agency of the Year at the US Search Awards. He has been speaking about digital marketing for more than a decade.
Eric is co-author of The Art of SEO, and also writes columns in sites such as Search Engine Land, and Moz. Eric is the Founder and CEO of Stone Temple Consulting (STC), a 70+ person digital marketing agency based in Massachusetts, and STC offers content marketing, SEO, and social media services.
