Google Web Stories: Learn what they are and how to activate them to improve your SEO

15 Feb,2022

The way we use content on the web can change from one day to the other, but we alway want good, dynamic content that gives us information quickly. Web stories are perfect for that!

The Stories format has spread across the web impressively and promises to generate a large number of views for sites that take advantage of this novelty.
The trend became so strong that even Google, the world's largest search engine, decided to embrace it, creating Google Web Stories.
In today's content, we have a small guide on this new way of distributing content organically.

Learn how to create them and see SEO best practices for Web Stories recommended by Google itself, in order to further optimize your reach and opportunities.

Discover Google Web Stories
Incorporated by Google a few month ago, Web Stories are similar to Instagram Stories. The goal is to improve the user experience when viewing content on the web, mainly through mobile devices.
This format was created by Snapchat in 2011 and exploded across the internet in 2016 when Instagram started using it on the homepage.
Then other social networks followed the trend: Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and even LinkedIn joined the feature.
Therefore, this format is already quite familiar to users all over the world, as well as being widely used and encouraged.

The popularity of Stories gives Google's new feature huge potential that brands should explore in Inbound Marketing strategies.
While the format is more focused on the mobile experience, it also supports desktop views and currently appears in three channels: classic search, Google Images and Google Discover, where they are prominently featured.

Learn how to create good Google Web Stories
In the topics below you will get in touch with important tips to make Web Stories efficient.
Follow these tips to create memorable stories and take your Content Marketing strategy to the next level.

Prioritize videos
Video media is better suited for web stories because it generates more engagement when compared to text and image metrics, although both formats can be suitable for use in stories.

Be brief
Write objectively and avoid too much text in the same post. The trick is to write only what you need and combine different fonts to create a typographic experience that captures the user's attention.

Personal perspective
People tend to prefer interactive and humanized stories. That's why it's so important to connect with your audience.
One option to give your content a personal perspective is to appear in front of the cameria and interact with your audience.

Narrative
Story building makes all the difference in an engaing web story. A good storytelling will create more consumer recognition with your brand, product or service.

See SEO optimization tips
In general, SEO for web stories follows the same principles that apply to the rest of the content on the web.
In other words, you need to find the right topics, optimize your posts, and structure around good user experience methods. See each of them in detail below.

Set the keyword
In the digital world, keywords are essential elements to generate traffic. The ideal is to do a search and find keywords that are most relevant to your niche.
Broad words are more competitive, so the trick is to use specific terms (long tail), which also allows you to reach people who are more targeted and more interested in the topics covered/marketed.
Even with less traffic, this strategy helps you reach a qualified audience. In SEO for web stories, as well as in Twitter Ads campaigns, segmentation is very necessary to optimize results and budget.

In addition to keywords that position your content in Google searches, it also serves as a guide in text production.
They must be entered:
  • In the title;
  • In the description of the image;
  • In the first paragraph;
  • Throughout the text

The other SEO tip from here revolve around content format and structure details.


Organize the content
Search engines are not fans of long texts that are not broken down into paragraphs. As their goal is to promote the best user experience, they penalize poorly structured content.
So create a compelling story and stick with it until the end of the carousel. In other words, you need to arouse the user's curiosity to encourage them to continue consuming.
Break the content into small blocks. Whenever possible, highlight important parts of the text in italics or bold, and it is important for the reader to be able to distinguish titles from the body text.


Final considerations
Google web stories are very interesting tools to explore, especially for the dissemination of Content Marketing.
Therefore, invest in the tool strategically and expand the reach of your brand in a creative and informative way, attracting the attention of users through the new content format provided by one of the largest search platforms.


Article written by Ideal Marketing - A Marketing automation platform

Image: Tecnologia foto criado por DCStudio - br.freepik.com