Web Stories

Web Stories are a visually rich, tappable and interactive full-screen narrative content format that comprises a sequence of images and/or videos with text and/or audio.

Web Stories have a similar appearance to tappable stories on social channels, such as Instagram and Snapchat. However, they don’t disappear automatically after 24 hours, which means publishers can create and host evergreen content on their sites.

Built on AMP, Web Stories offer the following key benefits:

• They can be embedded on all types of websites.

• They can function on both mobile and desktop devices.

• They are easy to navigate and load quickly.

4.7.2 Where Do Web Stories Appear?

A Semrush study of 2,423 SERPs found that the average number of Web Stories that appeared on a single SERP was three, while at least one Web Story appeared on each SERP.

Web Stories can appear in several different locations across the web, including the following:

Google Search

Web Stories appear in Google’s new SERP feature, called Visual Stories (a grid view of Web Stories) on Google Search. It is available in the US in the English language.

In the below example, Visual Stories highlights multiple Web Stories from distinct publishers for the search query “things to do in New York.”

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Google Discover

Web Stories can also appear on Google Discover. In the below GIF, which showcases Web Stories, you can see how they’ve been presented in a carousel.

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The carousel is available in India, the US and Brazil.

Websites

Unlike Instagram and Snapchat, publishers can host Web Stories on their own sites. This provides them with the creative freedom to draft and publish content according to their requirements.

Since Google indexes Web Stories, they can be drafted strategically to help drive relevant traffic to the website. Here’s an example of a Web Story that Vice created covering the issue of nighttime anxiety:

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It starts with the query, continues with easy-to-understand quotes from subject matter experts and wraps up with a strong call-to-action (CTA) to increase the chance of website visits.

Digital Products

Since Web Stories offer precise information in a digestible, short format, they can be used across digital assets such as brochures and emails. A well-crafted email with a Web Story can help grab customer attention and encourage them to take action.

For instance, you can write an email promoting a new product and add a relevant Web Story to share further details visually. Here’s an excellent example of US shoe seller TOMS leveraging storytelling to strengthen its email marketing efforts.

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The company doesn’t just sum up its emails with text, but offer prospects and clients the opportunity to dig deep and understand what the company is doing through visuals.

4.7.3 Do Web Stories Matter for SEO?

Web Stories can help strengthen your site’s SEO in a number of ways, which we’ve explored in more detail below.

1. Reach a Greater Audience

Creating content that stands out in a sea of competitors and reaches a large number of people can be challenging. However, compelling and SEO-optimized Web Stories can help you streamline editorial efforts and reach a sizable and relevant audience searching for a specific product or service.

3. Target Specific Keywords

Creating unique URLs for Web Stories and optimizing them with relevant keywords can improve their search visibility. To make it easier for Google to discover your Web Story, add its URL to the sitemap or link to your Web Story from your site. Ensure that the Web Story URL isn’t blocked to Googlebot via the noindex tag or robot.txt.

4. Leverage Short-Form Video Trends

According to the “What People Watched in the World” study, audiences increasingly enjoy watching short-form videos.

Furthermore, the growing video trend on Meta and other social channels is increasing viewers’ desire for variety and discovery. As a result, Google is indexing videos from millions of sites, including social media, to serve users.

4.7.4 Web Stories’ Additional Benefits

Besides improving SEO, some additional benefits of Web Stories include:

1. Content Monetization

Publishers can monetize their Web Stories thanks to direct ad sales, affiliate links and, since 2020, programmatic ad solutions via AdSense and Ad Manager.

2. External Linking

Stories on social media channels like Instagram and Facebook expire after 24 hours. Though this aspect appeals to audience FOMO (fear of missing out), it provides publishers with limited time to engage their target  and drive traffic to their website.

However, Web Stories ensure lasting engagement. Google indexes Web Story URLs, which are permanent like a regular page. Publishers can add links to their own website that provide value to readers, boost engagement and don’t disappear.

3. More content engagement insights

Web Stories can be linked to Google Analytics to track metrics such as page views, unique page views, average time on page, bounce rate, exit percentage and more. Several Web Story creator tools provide easy-to-use features to track these metrics.

For example, Web Story builderMakeStories has a tab called “Setup Analytics” with a “GA Analytics” field. Publishers can copy-paste the unique tracking ID of their Web Story and access the shared key performance metrics via the Events report in Google Analytics.

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4. Added Interactivity and Engagement

Web Stories enable publishers to host interactive and engaging elements, such as polls and quizzes. They can also use the “live-story” attribute to add new pages to a Web Story. Core use cases for live-story include coverage of live events, breaking news and sharing real-time updates to users without exiting the story.

4.7.5 Challenges Publishers Face With Web Stories

So what stops publishers from implementing Web Stories? Here are a few challenges they face:

• Targeting different demographics is challenging because companies need to constantly invest resources in collecting new data, such as gender, age, interests, etc.

• Working with a new product that doesn’t have demonstrated return on investment (ROI).
• Securing buy-in from the C-suite can be challenging because they don’t see initial ROI in Web Stories. For instance, during the initial months, it could be tough to get the desired amount of traffic with Web Stories.

Despite these challenges, we suggest that businesses invest in Web Stories because Google is indexing and displaying short-form videos from the web and social channels like Tiktok and Meta in search results. The ongoing trend of short-from video consumption can help publishers gain a competitive edge in upcoming times.

4.7.6 Web Stories Best Practices

Here are a few best practices to create Web Stories for maximum impact.

Storytelling

Storytelling is a powerful tool that can help convey complex messages with ease. With storytelling, you can make the material engaging and grab the audience’s attention.

All you need to do is share your opinions and create helpful content in an appealing and relatable format. It’s also worth leveraging video content formats because they are more engaging than images and text.

Designing

Packaging and creating a great story that is enticing also discoverable is based on optimizing the following main parts of a story:

• Web story poster –
  • Background image – Use a high quality static image. Videos and animations are not allowed.
  • Ensure it is at least 640×853 pixels large
  • Check that the aspect ratio is 3:4.
  • The title of your story, your publisher name and publisher logo are automatically placed and displayed on the lower third of your poster. This means you shouldn’t embed any of these onto your poster background image.
  • Ensure the most engaging part of your poster’s imagery is in the upper two thirds. This way the automatically added elements won’t obscure important details.
  • Avoid burned-in text on your poster images. It may be visually confusing to viewers and search engines won’t be able to crawl it.
  • Title 
    • Up to 70 characters
    • Do not place the title in the image background
  • Publisher logo – 
    • A small icon square that represents your brand
    • 1:1 aspect ration
• Cover page – 
  • Make the image tapless and matches the poster
• Story page
  • A minimum of 4 and maximum of 30 pages

Most importantly, resize it to fit various device sizes. In addition, leverage animations and high-quality audio clips to create an immersive experience for readers.

SEO

Search engines like Google are always looking at the best way of understanding the content on any given platform, including stories. Here are some of the SEO best practices helps your story get discovered and indexed:

• Meta data
  • Title tag – Up to 40 characters
  • Publisher name
  • Publisher logo: 96px96px logo that represents your brand
  • Poster Image: The image displayed to users on the web before they open your story. This image should be at least 640x853px and contain no text.
• General SEO/ content guidelines:
  • Include a description of your story
  • Link to your story on site or social pages
  • Avoid burned-in (embedded) in-text images and videos and instead layer them on the template
  • Add schema.org structured data
  • Add Open Graph Protocol (OGP) tags on the story
  • Create a dedicated XML stiemap for Web Stories
  • Add a self-reference canonical tag to safeguard from content duplication
  • Create CTA’s at the end of the story to entice users to the website.

4.7.7 How to Create Web Stories

Creating Web Stories and monetizing this new channel for traffic is pretty straightforward. You can serve these short and informative bursts of content to your audience by following the steps shared below.

AMP Basics

Web Stories can be created using the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) format using the Google Creators guides and tutorials page.

Be sure to set the metadata attributes including a page description, title and other elements to help optimize the content for sharing and search.

Tools like Google’s AMP Test tool can help you identify and rectify any errors in the Web Stories.

Tools and Platforms to Create No-Code Web Stories

You don’t always need a design team or a web developer to create Web Stories. You can leverage several tools and platforms to share engaging Stories. Let’s take a closer look at some examples.

1. Newsroom AI

Newsroom AI enables publishers to create stellar Web Stories for the mobile age by offering advanced features. It provides a WYSIWYG builder that can help manage any number of media, shapes or text layers with the scenes.

With Newsroom AI, publishers can create teams with multiple roles and asset permissions and manage templates and brand elements in one place. Besides, they can integrate with any existing CMS — such as Joomla or WordPress, with the platform RSS and API connectivity.

The advanced publishing settings, access to more than 300 million Getty images, and format compatibility checklist further allow them to create content for Google Discover. Besides, it takes care of the sitemaps to ensure the content is discoverable once it is published.

2. MakeStories

We’ve already mentioned MakeStories and that’s because it offers a drag-and-drop functionality that allows creators to tailor their Web Stories. The tool also provides a secure and fast web host that allows hosting Web Stories without hassles.

Publishers can create Instagram-style carousels and embed them into their websites. Besides, MakeStories provides access to Google fonts and filters for editing and making the imagery more appealing. What’s more? It offers a WordPress plugin for publishers with a WordPress website that enables them to create Web Stories seamlessly.

3. WordPress Integration

Creators with a WordPress website can use the “Web Stories editor for WordPress” plugin. This plugin enables publishers to craft Web Stories directly from their websites.

Additionally, the plugin enables creators to set their metadata including images, logos, and excerpts.

4.7.8 Nice to Have

Once you create Web Story content, you should analyze a few things. For instance, you should track and understand who the content is reaching and whether it’s resonating with your target audience. This can help you create quality content and achieve high audience engagement.

Google Analytics is a user-friendly tool that can help gauge your Web Stories’ performance. Let’s look at how you can leverage this tool to achieve the best outcomes.

While the actionable tips and tactics shared in this section aren’t as crucial as those above, we suggest implementing them once you’ve created and published a few Web Stories.

We suggest you create a different Google Analytics account to monitor and analyze your Web Stories performance because your site’s traffic is different from that of Web Stories. Combining Stories with primary Google Analytics can lead to inaccurate traffic calculation.

Here’s how you can track Web Stories’ performance using Google Analytics. Follow the below steps to set up a separate Google Analytics profile for Web Stories.

1. Open Google Analytics and visit Admin > Property. Click “Create Property”.

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2. Add the property name. Click on the “show advanced options” and toggle the button on the right side to create a universal analytics property.

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3. Enter your unique Web Stories URL and select the HTTPS protocol. Next, select the “Create a Universal Analytics property only” option.

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4. Click on “Next”. Google will then ask a few things about your business, fill in your answers and click “Create”.

You’ll see the following window.

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5. Copy the UA number and go to the Web Stories settings. Paste the number and hit the save button.

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Once stories are setup publishers are able to see the following event and behavior stats below in order to mesure content effectiveness.

4.7.9 Avoid These Common Pitfalls

For Web Stories to appear on Google Discover and Search as single results, publishers must adhere to Google’s content policies. Violating the guidelines can backfire, and Google may block the Web Stories from appearing in SERPs.

Using Copyrighted Content

If your Web Story infringes another brand’s copyrights, Google can block it from appearing. So, ensure that the Web Stories contain original content.

Low-Quality Assets

Google focuses on providing the best experience to Web Story viewers. So, ensure that the images and videos you use in the content are high-quality.

Text-Heavy Web Stories 

Google doesn’t allow text-heavy content and recommends keeping the character count to 280 per page. However, the search engine’s guidelines for Web Stories actually limit each page’s word count to 180.

In addition, the search engine also encourages publishers to use video content that is less than 60 seconds in length per page.

Incomplete or Incohesive Stories

Given that Google can block Web Stories without a cohesive narrative or require users to click through to other sites for essential information, it’s essential that your content tells a complete and compelling story.

Overly Promotional

Google looks down upon overly commercial Web Stories where the sole goal is to advertise a service or a product. Publishers can add affiliate marketing links as long as they’re limited to a minor part of the story.

Display ads are allowed to be placed, but publishers should follow the Story Ad Guidelines.

4.7.10 Examples of Web Stories Done Well

What makes Web Stories so crucial for publishers is their ability to engage the readers and evoke emotions in the target audience that encourage action.

In fact, a study by the Harvard Business Review reveals that emotionally connected audiences:

• Visit a business website more often

• Are twice as valuable

• Consume more content

• Recommend a business more

• Follow the advice

With this in mind, it’s no surprise publishers are creating thoughtful Web Stories. Here, we will share a couple of Web Stories to gauge what made them valuable for the readers.

Case Study 1: The Australian

The Australian is a leading national publication that focuses on empowering audiences with the news. It brings audiences the latest Australian news on sports, politics, entertainment, lifestyle, technology and breaking world news.

Being a subscription led busines, the publisher was encouraged to create a separate “Visual Stories” section on its website, in order to target newer and younger audiences such as Gen Z and Alpha.

Here’s their Visual Stories section, where The Australian publishes engaging Web Stories for its audience.

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The section appears and is used to distill the main stories of the day in a simple yet effective manner, as explainers. As you also go through a particular story, native ad integrations have been added to provide separation of the explainer highlights.

Case Study 2: Puppy Data

Puppy Data strives to provide guidance and helpful tips to support new owners, helping them make informed decisions along their journey. The organization offers comprehensive buying guides, training manuals and data to ensure that owners understand the needs of their new pets.

Although its research-based long-form content is immensely helpful for readers, Puppy Data struggled to grab the audience’s attention for long. It needed a solution to share its message more effectively while offering an immersive experience for its audience.

That’s when Puppy Data stumbled upon the concept of Web Stories and decided to leverage them to its advantage. Here’s an example of a Web Story created by Puppy Data.

We can see the following elements of storytelling in its Web Stories:

1. Well-researched and informative content

2. High-quality imagery and videos

3. Appealing design, color and fonts

In this way, Puppy Data’s team created and published engaging Web Stories with high-quality images, videos and relevant content that matched user intent.

4.7.11 Actions and Takeaways

Web Stories enable publishers to share their brand message in an immersive and engaging storytelling format. It’s no surprise that these tappable stories are gaining massive traction in the modern creator economy.

After reading through this post, you should be able to understand everything about Web Stories, their significance, and the best ways to create them. As mentioned, implementing the best SEO practices and learnings can help you achieve favorable outcomes and high rankings in Google.

The shared case studies will further guide you to produce excellent visual content that engages your audience and generates revenue.