The Trouble With Troubleshooting AMP Page Issues

Talk at Google has been dominated by AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) in recent weeks. Building a platform to create super fast mobile pages is a major undertaking for the world’s largest search engine. With millions of mobile pages being created every day, there were sure to be a few snags in the AMP process.

Validation is a Common Hang Up

Google has recently released information on how to evaluate issues along the way to AMPing your mobile pages. The first point that the webmasters stress is the importance of periodically checking on your validation status. Keeping an eye on all the technical backend components of pages is a standard part of SearchRPM services. We can’t tell you how often we find a simple technical error is holding a page back from ranking.

Making sure pages are valid in the eyes of the AMP platform is the first big issue some website owners have faced. Another problem is “warnings” that a page isn’t using best practices. If pages have elements that aren’t quite right or may become errors in the near future they’ll get flagged. The errors have to be corrected before mobile pages are given AMP status.

Fixing Validation Errors

If you want to AMP mobile pages you’ll need to have a Google Search Console. It’s free to set up and gives you the ability to see which pages have been flagged. Google will provide information on which error was identified, but it’s up to you to fix it.

There are a few tools that have been developed to help troubleshoot and correct AMP issues. AMP browser extensions for Chrome and Opera use color-coding to tell you the status of each page. The AMP Web Validator tool from the AMP Project can also test page validation.

That’s the easy part. Where most website owners hit a roadblock is figuring out how to read the page source and correct it.

While there are a number of options for checking validation, you need technical know how to get the issues resolved. If you have a dedicated webmaster then it’s not a serious issue, but for everyone else validation issues could cause some pages to run slow.

Prefer to have a professional web optimization team handle your AMP page updates? SearchRPM can include AMP validation checks in our technical SEO service. While we’re checking the pages for errors and getting them compliant, we can also audit the on-page elements to look for additional areas of improvement.

Give us a call today to discuss how we can help you gain more exposure through mobile.

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By Michael Ramirez
SearchRPM Founder

Michael Ramirez is the Founder of SearchRPM, an Austin, TX based search marketing company that’s well-versed in Search Engine Optimization best practices. You can follow Michael Ramirez on Twitter @openmic0323 or on Google+ to see what he’s up to next.