SEO in Google Web Stories

SEO For Google Web Stories

Hello, and welcome to the world of Google web stories and SEO!

It’s been 2 years since web stories first appeared on the open webspace. In such a short period of time, it has emerged as the most successful method of storytelling on the open web. Google Web stories are simply web pages. They have unique URLs for each of their websites.

With over 5 billion searches per day, if they choose to develop web stories that stand out
independently in search results, it is more possible that CTR (Higher Click-Through-Rate) for
websites or anything related to that will improve. It only takes a few minutes to set up the entire process of creating Google Web Stories.

Google Web stories have a lot more to offer than stories we usually see on popular social media platforms, because they are more up to date, exclusively built for the web, and powered by AMP technology.

With Internal and external linking possibilities you can link your stories with other web pages and to a specific section within your own web story as well! Also, they can appear in search results, if SEO implementation is done right.

Yes, SEO for Google Web Stories is possible and highly recommended. As AMP Web Stories are the biggest takeaways for SEO opportunities.

You can do all of the SEO things you’ve probably been doing for other web pages on your websites, such as Pre SEO and Post SEO. It will help your SEO for web stories rank higher in search engines.

Just like we link web pages to websites, you can link web stories to your website.

You can add your stories to your sitemaps, share them on social media. Whatever things you do for a website regarding marketing and SEO, the same can be done for Google web stories.

Why is SEO important for Google Web Stories?

Web stories are A-grade citizens at Google search with their dedicated carousel in Google discover.

Web stories can appear on Google discover on Androids, iOS, and most recent versions of the Google application.

You can find them near the top of the feed in the carousel.

According to the most recent updates, the carousel is now only available in the United States, Brazil, and India.

In addition to that, these web stories can also be included in the grid view on Google search. Currently, this feature is available in the USA only in English.

When Google search is available across all regions and languages, users can also explore web stories in Google images.

Most importantly, the image card will appear just along with the web stories icon, helping you to differentiate between the other web images and web stories.

Luckily, web stories have their own separate URLs, possibly they may show up if a user searches your site.

This applies to internal site search and Google search results as well.

These aspects must be highlighted that SEO is important for Google web stories. They cannot be recognized in search engines without SEO.

If you are looking to discover your web stories in Google search, make sure of all the SEO best practices you have followed in the process of making web stories.

Did you know what are the best practices for SEO for Google Web Stories?

SEO best practices for web stories are in-depth below.

1.The foundation of SEO is high-quality content

Creating engaging content is highly recommended when you think of SEO. Ensure that your content is unique and precisely written to keep your audience engaged.

Apart from that, it should be useful and interesting in all aspects related to content

2. Guidelines for Metadata

All you need to add is the standard markup of a meta title, meta description, open graph protocol, structured data, and Twitter card.

AMP Web Stories SEO ( metadata ) guidelines have to be followed while creating Google web stories

3. Title

Web story titles should be clear and precise and ideally contain no more than 70 characters likewise web page titles.

Your title should contain enough information that helps users to understand what they will see in the story

4. Page attachments

Additional information can be placed in classic article form as a page attachment. This can be beneficial for those who want to deep dive into the details.

It will help you to add something more, offer more to your audience.

5. Accessibility

To improve the accessibility of web stories, you can add image ALT texts, video descriptions. But it should be strongly meaningful to your web stories with a required characters and words

6. Integrations

Well, being a publisher you are allowed to integrate your web stories into your website. You can link your web stories to a particular landing page you might have for. This is also something you can serve more to your audience

7. Indexing

Add your web stories into the XML sitemap, if you want your web stories to appear on Google search results. Also, add canonical tags to describe your web stories in an explicitly detailed way

8. AMP validation

AMP validation of web stories is a must to make sure that your HTML is correct. This will help your web stories to keep free from HTML and SEO errors.

However, AMP validated web stories get higher priorities than non AMP validated Web Stories

In addition to that, you can use a unique structured format, creative designing skills, a unique user-centric approach, and a lot more to keep your users engaged.

SEO for web stories is like SEO for web pages. Above are the essential components of Google web stories for SEOs.

If you’re a publisher and seeking more traffic leads then web stories are specifically for you to take into consideration.

So start playing with them by using one of the most popular web stories creation tools called MakeStories.

MakeStories is the most popular and the most advanced web story builder in the market. It has not just an editor to build web stories, it has everything that you will ever need to build beautiful web stories.

MakeStories editor, MakeStories WordPress plugin, and soon MakeStories team is coming up with the MakeStories LITE which is an application to be released too soon.

Apart from that, MakeStories offers its own web story hosting. Everything is included in MakeStories hosting plans, such as automated migrations, advanced caching, automated updates, and expert web story support.

Create an immersive and interactive user experience where you can get relevant insights with analytics.

MakeStories allows you to create competitive web stories that are SEO-friendly. In order to create an SEO semantic web story, they must adhere to Google discover search policies and web guidelines.

MakeStories offers its own four-step SEO strategy that helps in the ranking of your web story in Google search results.

Let’s go through the four-step SEO approach used by MakeStories.

1. Publisher Details

This is the first step of SEO where you can add keywords, short descriptions, images, and author types.

If you have already filled in the author type in the part of the general settings, then it will be automatically reflected over here in the publisher details.

However, there are certain things like Publisher logo, Publishing date, update date, and Twitter handle that can be also added.

In the last, you just have to click on Publish as a web story and you’re done with the publisher details

2. Meta tags & SEO

If you have already added the title, descriptions, and keywords while filling up publisher details. There’s no need to add them again in the meta tags as you’ve already created them way before at the time of filling publisher details.

Though if your SEO team is still looking out to fill something more, it can be anything like keywords, meta description, Google verification, you just need to put the name and value of that specific and it will be output in your final Web Story.

3. Story Validation

For story validation, you have to follow certain guidelines which are set by Google itself. You can skip this step but the MakeStories team highly recommends following and completing the story validation as it helps a lot to discover on Google search results.

So web story validation follows a few characteristics like minimum words, story length, text density, Image ALT attributes, etc.

4. Setup Analytics

The last and most important thing is to set up Analytics for your web stories. First, you just have to put up a Google Analytics Tracking code.

You can set up your Google Analytics tracking code in general settings. You also need to add a Facebook app ID, and Twitter app ID, if you’ve enabled them in your sharing settings.

If you want to track your users, who visited your web stories to retarget them on Facebook, you just have to fill up the Facebook Fb pixel field also.

Now, if you have any other type of analytics something like Adobe analytics then bring in your code and put it there in the tracking code.

But remember one thing, that analytic software should be compatible with AMP.

The final and exclusive thing you have to do here is you can place ads in your web stories. To do that, you either need to have a Google Adsense account or a Google tag manager.

You can also use third-party advertising on your DFP by clicking on custom ads.

To check a complete guide on how you can prepare a web story with SEO using MakeStories, you can visit the MakeStories University website, where you can see all about in-depth details of MakeStories in a small tutorial form.

Complete MakeStories editor features and functionality uses are covered in these university courses where separate video tutorials are also available for each lesson.

A tutorial guide for how to publish web stories on WordPress using MakeStories WordPress Plugin is also available on site.

In-depth SEO guide, WordPress authentication, Publishing story methods, understanding of MakeStories settings, etc will be covered in the export & publishing stories on WordPress tutorial guide.

Below are a few tips and techniques I would like to share that you can apply to make your website SEOs stand stronger in the competitive market. However, you can describe these tips as,

Tips to use Google Web Stories for your site SEO

• Build web stories for top-rated posts. Create web stories for any of your latest content or highly ranked content. It will help you to generate more clicks in a single day
• No need to embed web stories in posts. Putting the same preview in posts doesn’t serve as justification for your web stories
• Optimize your page title but make sure your web page title and web stories title shouldn’t be the same
• Nothing can beat content. The quality of your content matters the most when you’re writing anything. Your content should be the best and unique out of the box
• Submit your web stories XML sitemap to Google. It will help your story to get rank in top search results
• Link your home pages or relevant category pages into your web stories that will initially build an integrational linking between your website and web stories
• Create an individual web story landing page and link with your web pages
• Use all SEO tactics including keyword research and keyword stuffing, image ALT texts, meta descriptions, titles, etc to ensure SEO hype

The above tips will help you understand How to use Web Stories for your site SEO! You can use Web Stories to keep your site SEO extraordinary.