With more and more people using their mobile devices to browse the Internet, making sure your website is mobile-friendly is a must.

That’s one of the reasons why Google introduced the AMP initiative which aims to improve the user experience for mobile users.

The AMP initiative was adopted by other major websites like Twitter and Facebook and is used by popular websites such as Tasty, Slate, Wired, CNBC, and others. But what exactly is AMP and why is it so important?

In this post, I’ll explain what AMP is, why you should enable it on your WordPress website and show you the best AMP plugins for WordPress.

What Exactly is AMP?

AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. In layman’s terms, it’s a framework that uses AMP HTML which strips out most of the elements like JavaScript and third-party scripts which cause web pages to load slower on mobile devices.

Why You Should Enable AMP on Your WordPress Website

Enabling AMP on your website has a couple of benefits. For starters, you already know that mobile-friendly pages get ranked higher in search results. Since the whole point of AMP is to improve the appearance of your website for mobile devices, it’s only natural that enabling AMP improves your search engine rank.

Another reason why you’d want to enable AMP is that websites that have AMP enabled, indicate they are optimized for mobile viewing with a with a little green lighting bolt, inviting users to click-through and visit them.

Lastly, by enabling AMP, you are making sure that visitors who land on your website while they’re using their smartphone, get the best possible user experience – a website that’s easy to read and navigate.

Top Five AMP Plugins for WordPress

Now that we’ve covered the benefits of AMP, here are the top 5 plugins that allow you to easily enable AMP on your WordPress website.

1. AMP for WP – Accelerated Mobile Pages

The first plugin on this list boasts a 4,5-star rating and has more than 100,00 active installs. The plugin automatically adds AMP support to your WordPress website and offers a guided setup for novice users as well as the ability to go straight to settings if you are a more experienced user.

Other key features include:

• Support for Gutenberg
• GDPR-compliant
• Support for Facebook comments and Disqus comments
• Custom AMP Editor so you can override the Content that you had written in a post or a page, so you can add different content just for AMP
• Support for several analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Facebook Pixel, and others
• Integration with Yoast SEO and All in One SEO
• And more

The plugin is completely customizable it even has some useful extensions which enable AMP on Contact Form 7, email opt-ins, WooCommerce pages, and more. You can get access to those extensions by signing up for a yearly membership. The plans start at $149/year for one site and go all the way up to $499/year for unlimited websites.

2. AMP

The AMP plugin is the official AMP plugin for WordPress, developed and maintained not only by Automattic, the parent company behind WordPress but also by Google. It is one of the oldest AMP plugins and has more than 300,00 active installs and a solid 3,5-star rating.

The plugin comes with full AMP support for the default WordPress themes and Gutenberg. Aside from allowing you to customize how your site appears with AMP functionality enabled, this plugin also comes with a set of tools that allow you to validate and debug your AMP pages and posts.

While the AMP plugin offers an easy way to enable AMP on your site, it does have a few shortcomings. It doesn’t support as many post types as the previous plugin and it doesn’t have support for WooCommerce. Another downside is that you will have to install another plugin to enable support for Yoast SEO plugin. However, if you want a simple, no-frills plugin to get you started, then the AMP plugin is a great choice.

The AMP plugin is completely free to download and install from the official repository.

3. Better AMP – WordPress Complete AMP

The Better AMP plugin is another AMP plugin that’s easy to use and offers more than just support for posts and pages. The Better AMP plugin has an impressive number of features, boasts 10,000+ active installs, and has a 4,5-star rating.

A standout feature of the Better AMP plugin is that it offers an online demo so you can see what your posts and pages will look like once you install this plugin and enable AMP on your site.

Other key features include:

• The ability to construct and customize the content and styles via WordPress Customizer
• Support for RTL languages and an out-of-the-box translation system
• Support for sliders, Youtube embeds, and Google Analytics
• And more

This plugin can be downloaded for free from the official WordPress repository.

4. AMP WP – Google AMP for WordPress

The AMP WP plugin  is a newer plugin on the AMP scene but it offers a lot of the same functionality as the Better AMP plugin. Despite that, it still has a 4,5-star rating and 900+ active installations. This plugin is rather generous with features which include support for standard post types and pages as well as native support for Yoast SEO and all cache plugins.

Other main features are:

• Gutenberg Support
• Powerful settings panel with plenty of customization options
• Translation Panel
• 100% RTL Compatible
• Support for third-party analytics to track visitors such as Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Segment Analytics, and more
• The ability to enable or disable AMP for any post

This is another free plugin that can be downloaded from the official repository.

5. WP AMP – Accelerated Mobile Pages for WordPress

The last plugin on the list, WP AMP, has a 4-star rating and more than 6,000 active installs. If you’re looking for an easy to use plugin, the WP AMP plugin might just be what you’re after as it requires no extra configuration. It provides full support for ads and analytics and all you have to do is install and activate it and you are all done!

It’s worth mentioning that WP AMP has a premium version which is available on CodeCanyon and offers even more features which include:

• Option to choose SCHEMA for each post type
• The ability to show or hide featured image
• You can select to show or hide categories and taxonomy, recent posts, and update section title
• The option to change footer copyright information
• Custom Theme colors
• Header Menu for AMP Pages
• Custom CSS
• Support for social media icons
• The ability to remove Open Graph meta from the header section

You can purchase the premium version of the plugin for a one-time fee of $30 which includes 6 months of support and updates from the plugin author. You can also extend the support time to 12 months for an additional fee.

Final Thoughts

Enabling AMP on your website has several benefits. Thankfully, with WordPress and the right plugin, it’s not difficult to enable it for your WordPress website. Use this article to find the best AMP plugin for your needs so you can provide your mobile visitors with the best possible user experience.