Mobile users make up a significant portion of website traffic, and website owners must ensure that their websites are mobile-friendly and optimized for a smooth mobile browsing experience. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a Google-backed project designed to optimize web pages for mobile users, making them load faster and smoother. AMP pages are streamlined versions of HTML pages, stripped down of non-essential elements, which results in faster load times and improved mobile experience.
The Importance of Adhering to AMP Guidelines
However, adhering to AMP guidelines is crucial for the proper delivery of AMP pages to mobile users. In particular, if your AMP page contains templating syntax errors, it may malfunction, and as a result, not get indexed by search engines, which may lead to your website not appearing in mobile search results.
Invalid AMP Pages and Templating Issues
Before delving into the tips, it is essential to understand what constitutes an invalid AMP page. Invalid AMP pages are pages that fail to meet AMP's specifications and guidelines. Specifically, in the context of this article, invalid AMP pages refer to pages with templating issues.
Templating issues arise when the AMP page contains incorrect HTML or AMP syntax. These issues prevent the page from being validated by the AMP validator, resulting in the page not being indexed by search engines.
Fixing Templating Issues
As previously stated, there are several types of templating issues that your AMP page may encounter. In the following section, we have outlined some general tips on how to fix templating issues.
AMP HTML is a subset of HTML, with additional custom AMP-specific tags. Using invalid HTML or custom tags that are not part of AMP HTML may result in your AMP page not getting validated. Consequently, it is vital to ensure that your AMP page only contains valid AMP HTML.
AMP components are pre-built JavaScript modules that implement common web development patterns, such as image carousels, video players, and social sharing buttons. AMP components ensure that your page is validated by the AMP validator, which in turn ensures that your page gets indexed by search engines.
Inline styling may cause your AMP page to fail validation. Instead, it is recommended to use CSS stylesheets to style your AMP page.
Custom JavaScript may also cause your AMP page to fail validation. It is recommended to use AMP components, which provide pre-built JavaScript modules and ensure that your page is validated.
Invalid AMP syntax may also cause your AMP page to fail validation. Ensure that your AMP page only contains valid AMP syntax by referring to the AMP documentation.
Conclusion
In conclusion, adhering to the AMP guidelines is essential for ensuring the proper delivery of AMP pages to mobile users. By fixing templating issues, you can ensure that your AMP page is validated and indexed by search engines, resulting in improved mobile search visibility. By following the tips outlined in this guide, you can fix templating issues and ensure that your AMP pages are properly delivered to mobile users.
