You found the AMP button on the WordPress post dashboard, didn’t you? And you want to know what it does and whether to use it or not. It doesn’t seem to make a difference when you use it, so what’s the big deal?
Browsing speed.
For mobile devices.
That’s the simple answer.
We often take browsing for granted, expecting our website to look great on every device, just like it does on our own.
There lies a problem.
Our device isn’t every device or every browser. It’s only one device and the browser we use on it. Mobile devices come in different sizes and formats. Even flipping a phone on its side changes how things are viewed. Every webpage has to reconfigure itself so the phone and browser can keep the page stable and orderly in its new orientation.
It turns out there’s a new metric that counts mobile speed as part of our site’s overall SEO image.
If our mobile-viewed page hesitates even the slightest, our site is disadvantaged.
AMP (accelerated mobile pages) increases the speed of a site’s page. The difference is milliseconds (that’s why you can’t SEE a difference). If our site is a few milliseconds too long in load time, we lose.
That was wordy and techy sounding. Stay with me. It gets easier (I’m not a tech geek either).
WordPress has always produced mobile-compatible themes. Compatibility has never been an issue. The speed metric comes into play today.
To deal with this new metric, WP recently developed a solution to it with its AMP feature. It’s a new way of serving specially constructed site pages to mobile devices (tablets, included). Every bit of ‘chunky’ script is removed while what remains is arranged in its simplest form so it can be served to your visitor quickly.
I’m a hack when it comes to computers. I write books. I know only enough bits of WordPress code to get me into deep trouble.
That’s why I stay away from it.
My involvement in WP is like yours. I use it to promote my work. I’ve been aware of the speed metric for a while but ignored it. I soon recognised it had some degree of importance when ‘AMP’ started appearing on my WP dashboard. I left my seat when ‘BOOST’ appeared alongside Jetpack. I pressed the button, and the speed increase was amazing.
Obviously, speed IS an issue!
AMP (and BOOST) is fantastic, but it can only do so much. There’s still a bit of work to be done by you (the site’s webmaster) if you want to make the most out of this new metric:
- Size pics to match the exact viewing pixels.
- If using JPEGS, compress as much as possible. (50k – 200k per image, yes kilobytes!)
- Remove plug-ins.
- No imported fonts.
- No animations, especially on the front page.
- No ads.
- Upgrade your theme to the latest version.
Before you groan at my suggestions, they are ONLY suggestions. If you’re making a ton of money from ads, keep ’em. If you’re a photographer, let your hi-res pics stay. I’m just saying these are the things that slow down the site’s pages.
Photo sizes: The metric has been squeezed so much that the smallest possible version of a photo is needed on every page. If the WP theme feature image specs suggest 1200×675 pixels, then make it exactly 1200×675. Don’t resize and crop in WP; do it in an image editor and then import the finished pic.
And when it comes to compressing the image, don’t be shy. Compress it as far as possible. If the photo looks identical at 50k as it does for 150k, then go with the 50k version. There’s half a millisecond in it!
Plug-Ins: They are tempting but add weight to a page. Obviously, there are some you have to keep around to make the site work (Akismet, Jetpack, etc). Even if you switch off the plug-in, the theme still looks for it to find out it’s been switched off. Don’t ask me why it slows the pages, too; it just does.
Imported Fonts: I don’t use them, so they don’t apply to me, but if you’re using a non-WP font on your site, the font data has to come from another site to appear on yours. That import delays the process and adds milliseconds. Use WP inbuilt fonts instead to keep up the speed.
Animations: Flashing banners on the front page were very popular (Remember MySpace?). Not anymore. Animated gifs and movie files require more data than static images (or no images at all) do. Most people are moving their animations off their front pages and leaving them to appear later on the site — and they only run when a visitor clicks on something to activate them, not automatically.
Advertisements: As you may have guessed, an ad is a combination of off-site imports plus animation. Moving the ads off the front page and onto others will help improve the standing of the overall site when it comes to search rankings.
Theme upgrade: Themes built before 2018 were written at a time when the mobile metric wasn’t so important. If you’re running an old theme, chuck it out and find one written in this century with some serious mobile-creds!
Most of the metrics (as far as I understand) go towards a site’s front page. Your primary page has got to be faster than lightning-fast for it to be in the running. There are a few themes in WP’s giant theme bank that have a chance of meeting the new standards. Choose yours wisely.
My site receives an ‘A’ for mobile and desktop loading speeds. Go have a look at my front page. I’ve got a site title, a pic, a menu and a tiny bit of text. That’s all. If the photo wasn’t compressed as far as it is, the site would get a ‘B’. An ad inclusion or a sign-up pop-up takes it to ‘F’.
Now you know just how thin a page needs to be to get an ‘A’ in today’s mobile-friendly world.
That’s about it.
Oh yeah — I could mention something about the speed of your current host, but I won’t. You’ll figure out why when you start working on your site. Someone might also mention something about offsite caching (CDN), but I’ve found that my own host is doing well enough.
Now, get on with it. In the months to come, you’ll thank me for this page!
You’re bloody welcome.
–Michael Forman (download a copy of my book. It’s free!)
Discover more from Michael Forman – Author of Dark Fiction & Drama
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