Higher search engine rankings and faster load times …
… are what every website owner wants.
But achieving these can be really difficult if you don’t know what you are doing.
This is where Google AMP comes to rescue. It a project by Google to help websites load faster.
While implementing AMP on your website does not guarantee higher rankings in Google, a lot of marketers claim to have seen almost double the traffic from Google after implementing it.
Before I jump into the best AMP WordPress themes let’s find out what AMP is and why you should consider using it.
What is Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is an open-source project that aims to make web pages load faster on mobile devices.
Why?
Because a lot of people have slow internet connection. And most websites take over 5 seconds to load. That is a lot of time. Most mobile users aren’t patient enough to wait that long.
Google AMP’s goal is to make web pages load instantly. Not just fast, but to load instantly.
One of the reasons why Google came up with AMP is because most website owners don’t have the resources (time and money) to improve the speed of their websites even if they want to.
AMP is simply a framework for building pages that load faster.
Implementing AMP into your website doesn’t cost much even if you hire a web developer.
But because you are a WordPress user, you can do it for free by installing a plugin.
Once you implement AMP on your website, Google will send mobile visitors to AMP version of your pages instead of the normal pages.
Now, just like with any other new technology, there are pros and cons of enabling AMP on your website.
The Pros
Your website will load instantly. The users will click your page in the search results and boom, they are on your page.
When you enable AMP, Google displays an AMP badge on your search listing. This is believed to increase your search engine CTR.
So, if a large majority of your traffic comes from mobile searches, you will probably see a boost in search engine rankings.
Google loves websites that offer a great user experience. And the speed of your website contributes to a good user experience.
A lot of SEO Experts in the internet marketing community claim to have seen an increase in their Search Engine traffic after implementing AMP on their websites.
There are also a few horror stories of people implementing AMP and losing all their mobile traffic.
The Cons
Do you make money with Advertising?
Then there is potential bad news. Google AMP doesn’t support all ad networks out there.
If you are an Adsense publisher, ads will still show up in your content.
But if you are on some other ad network, you might be out of luck. Here’s a list of supported ad networks.
The worst part about AMP is that you lose control over the content. You don’t have much control over how things are displayed.
Think of AMP as a diet version of normal HTML.
Google AMP only allows static HTML and some limited JavaScript. Third-party JS is allowed in iframes, it cannot block rendering.
So, you can’t use most of your favorite fancy widgets.
What do I mean by that?
Google AMP won’t allow you to use widgets such as Facebook Like Box, Twitter Feed, etc.
Its main goal is to load web pages in an instant.
And JavaScript makes a huge impact on the speed of your website.
Not only that, you also won’t be able to use JavaScript widgets like Popups and Ajax-based Opt-in forms.
If you use an Analytics tool than Google Analytics, you might not be able to track mobile visitors on your AMP pages.
Google AMP does support about 20+ Analytics tools out there, which is great, but not every tool.
Will AMP work with WordPress?
Nope.
Not without a plugin like the AMP plugin.
WordPress by itself doesn’t offer support for AMP.
There’s no option in the settings menu of your WordPress dashboard you can use to turn on AMP.
The free AMP Plugin by Automattic, the awesome people behind WordPress, is easy to use doesn’t need much (if any) configuration.
It’s a set and forget plugin. However it comes with downsides, for example it only supports WordPress posts, not pages.
Will my current theme work with AMP?
While most WordPress themes will work fine with AMP, if you want to be able to customize the AMP version of your pages, you need AMP-ready WordPress Themes.
Most WordPress themes aren’t ready for AMP.
To get your site AMP ready you can either use an AMP friendly theme, or you can customize your current theme using an AMP plugin.
Best AMP WordPress plugins
The AMP Plugin we discussed in the last section doesn’t offer almost any customization options for the AMP pages it generates.
There are are few other AMP WordPress plugins that are better at customizing your current theme, and support both posts, pages, categories
- weeblrAMP is probably the most promising AMP plugin out there right now. weeblrAMP lets you create a nearly complete AMP version of your site, as fully featured as the AMP specification allows: posts, pages, categories, tags and archives.
Also built-in is comments, Analytics, ads, schema.org, Yoast and Jetpack integrations. The premium edition automatically converts Contact Forms 7 and Gravity forms, Mailchimp For WP, WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads.
- WP AMP is a premium WordPress plugin which adds support for Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). WP AMP lets you include all content types and archives in your mobile website.
You can embed images, videos, audios and iframes. You can customize the standard design or create a totally new one. It lets you track visitors with Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Yandex.Metrika and Facebook Pixel. It works with Yoast SEO, All in One SEO Pack, The SEO Framework, SEO Ultimate. You can integrate AMP with WooCommerce to sell on mobile, AdSense and DoubleClick advertising to AMP pages.
- AMP for WP automatically adds Accelerated Mobile Pages (Google AMP Project) functionality to your WordPress site. This feature-rich plugin lets you customize your current theme to become AMP ready. See all features and integrations.
If you want to be able to customize the look (colors and layout) of your AMP Pages, you will need a theme that comes with support for AMP and allows you to customize the output.
To do that your best option is probably to get a ready made AMP WordPress theme.
The Best AMP-Ready WordPress Themes
Publisher
Publisher is a magazine-style theme for WordPress.
It offers a beautiful responsive design. This theme is perfect for creating news-style blogs. It comes with 90+ pre-made homepage templates to choose from.
You can easily customize all aspects of this theme’s design without touching a single line of code. This theme comes with full support for AMP.
Features:
- Over 90 pre-designed templates to choose from.
- Fully responsive design that looks great on all devices.
- Translation-ready, so you can translate it into multiple languages.
- Compatible with Visual Composer and offers over 70+ page builder blocks to choose from. Easily customize the design with the drag-and-drop builder.
- Offers 20 exclusive widgets you can use in sidebars.
- Offers 13 different post templates.
Price: $39
The Simple
The Simple is a business theme for WordPress. It offers everything you will need to create and run a business site.
Whether you are creating a website for a startup or an enterprise, you can easily customize this theme to suit your needs.
Features:.
- Comes with a simple setup wizard, so you can setup the theme yourself within seconds.
- Fully compatible with WooCommerce and offers 4 different shop styles themes to choose from.
- This theme is translation-ready, so you can easily translate it into multiple languages.
- Easily customize this theme with its live customizer.
- Allows you to select the Google fonts you want to use.
Price: $39
Onefleek
Onefleek is a magazine theme for WordPress. It is perfect for creating news sites.
It comes with dozens of different homepage layouts to choose from. All of these layouts give your site a look and feel of a premium online magazine.
Features:
- Fully responsive and looks great on all devices.
- Offers 4 different layouts for list based articles.
- Easily create review pages and review products based on Percentage, Stars or Points.
- Offers five different areas to display advertisements.
- Comes with support for automatically posting on social media.
- Easily customize all aspects of the design using the Live Customizer
- Multiple layouts to choose from for both posts and pages.
Price: $59
Folie
Folie is a multi-purpose WordPress theme. It comes with a drag-and-drop builder, so you can customize and use it to create any kind of a website.
Features:
- Comes bundled with Codeless Builder, Visual Composer, and two premium slider plugins.
- Over 25 different design templates to choose from.
- Easily make live changes to the design with the easy drag-and-drop builder.
- Comes with full support for WooCommerce, so you can painlessly create full-featured online stores.
- Fully responsive design that easily adapts to all screen sizes.
- Support for parallax scrolling sections.
- This theme is translation-ready. You can easily translate it into multiple languages to create a multilingual website.
Price: $59
Okab
Okab is a beautiful multi-purpose theme for WordPress.
It is fully customizable, so you can customize and use it to create a website in any industry. It comes with a drag-and-drop Visual Page Builder to help you customize the design within seconds.
This theme offers over 70 different layout variations to choose from. It also comes with full support for WooCommerce, so you can easily start selling your products online.
Features:
- Over 70+ layouts to choose from.
- A clean responsive design. This theme looks great on all screen sizes.
- Support for WooCommerce allows you to start selling online within minutes.
- You can easily translate this theme into multiple languages to create a multilingual website.
- Support for RTL languages.
- Comes with a drag-and-drop Visual Page Builder.
- 260+ Web Elements to easily create the perfect design for your pages.
Price: $59
Teem
Teem is a clean, minimal blogging theme for WordPress. It offers a responsive design and comes with full support for AMP.
It comes with dozens of customization options, so you can easily customize the design.
Features:
- Full support for AMP.
- Fully responsive design that easily adapts to all screen sizes.
- Support for both RTL and LTR Languages.
- Comes with different blog layouts to choose from.
- Offers accordion menus and sliders.
- Multiple areas to place your advertisements.
Price: $15
MobNews
As the name suggests, MobNews is a theme built for news websites. It offers a beautiful design that is fully responsive.
It comes with dozens of customization options, so you can fully customize the look and feel of your website’s design without touching a single line of code.
Features:
- Multiple areas to place advertisements.
- Support for accordion and carousels.
- Fully responsive design that looks great on all devices.
- Offers a beautiful mobile sidebar.
- Support for both RTL and LTR languages.
- Multiple blog layouts to choose from.
- Support for Font Awesome icons.
Price: $15
Newspaper
Newspaper is a stunning WordPress theme created for News Sites. It comes to a grid-based layout to give your website the look and feel of a premium news site.
It is fully customizable, so you can customize all aspects of this theme’s design yourself without writing a single line of code.
Features:
- Unlimited color coded categories. You can choose the color for all the categories on your website.
- AMP Page Builder to help you customize your pages with a simple drag-and-drop interface.
- Support for displaying Breadcrumbs at the top of posts.
- Fully responsive design that looks great on all devices.
Price: $49
AMP Drawer
AMP Drawer is a multipurpose theme for WordPress. It is fully responsive and easily adapts to all screen sizes. It comes with dozens of design templates to choose from.
Features:
- Support for PhoneGap and Cordova, so you can easily turn your site into a mobile app.
- Support for Lazy Loading images to improve website speed.
- Comes with over 400 Font Awesome Icons.
- Comes with over 50 templates to choose from.
Price: $17
AMP News Mobile
AMP News Mobile is a theme designed for news sites. It offers everything you will need to run a news site.
It comes with full support for AMP and offers 40+ AMP Valid templates to choose from. It also comes with a Contact Form that is AMP valid, so it will work even when the user visits an AMP page through Google.
Features:
- A responsive design that easily adapts to all screen sizes.
- Over 40 AMP Valid Templates to choose from.
- Comes with support for PhoneGap allowing you to easily turn your site into a native mobile app.
- Support for 400+ Font Awesome Icons.
Price: $16
BlogStart Pro
BlogStart Pro is a basic theme and lacks much of what the above premium themes offer, but it’s a good starter AMP WordPress theme that is free.
BlogStart Pro uses the Underscores starter theme and some elements of the theme use Twitter’s BootStrap 3 framework for the responsive layout.
Features:
- 100% AMP HTML
- All valid AMP
- No regular HTML version
- Google / SEO-friendly
- Free AMP WordPress theme
Price: Free
Conclusion
I hope this list helped you find the perfect theme for your website.
All of these themes offer full support for AMP.
Now, all you have to do is pick any one of these templates and get started with your site.
Did I miss your favorite theme? Has implementing AMP on your site had any impact?
If so, let me know in the comments below.
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