A Comprehensive Guide for SEO of Google Web Stories
Now that we've covered the basics, let's turn to the details you need as an SEO to optimize Google Web Stories.
Remember that the supported regions and languages for displaying content are limited, but regardless of where you're based, it's always helpful to learn something new about SEO. And it's likely that Web Stories will be rolled out globally in the future.
First of all, it's important to note that the usual SEO best practices for a website also apply to Web Stories, but there are some points worth discussing in more detail...
Content quality
For web stories, it's important that your content is of high quality. The content should meet the criteria of being "useful" and "interesting" and should capture the interest of users. Much of this depends on good storytelling techniques.
Consider titles and metadata
The title of your web stories should ideally be shorter than 70 characters and no longer than 90 characters. Like the title of a web page, it should contain enough description to help users understand what they'll find in the story.
For metadata, make sure to include the usual markup elements like meta title and meta description, structured data, open graph protocol, and a Twitter map. It's important to remember that webstories must follow the AMP story metadata guidance; you can read more about it here.
Crawling and indexing
Make sure your story doesn't contain a noindex attribute, otherwise Google won't index your page. Add your stories to your XML sitemap and create a section in your sitemap index if needed.
Use the Google Search Console's "Index Coverage Report" and "Sitemaps Report" to see if Google can find your published webstories. If you want your webstories to show up in Google desktop search results, you should also add support for landscape ads.
The last point regarding crawling and indexing is the use of canonical tags. Web stories must've a self-referential canonical tag. For stories published in multiple languages, you should use common hreflang best practices to better serve users.
Consider accessibility
It's a good idea to add subtitles to your video, but make sure the text doesn't cut off the screen or overlap with other content.
For this reason, it's best to avoid subtitles that are baked into the video. Remember that screens vary in size, so use technology that can handle different sizes.
Another action you can take is to add alt text to your images. This isn't only good for accessibility, but it also improves the findability of your posts.
Offer more
Do you want to offer users additional information besides the web story?
For this, you can use the AMP story page attachments, which allow you to provide this additional content. These can be components such as additional details, a more in-depth look at a topic, or just the next steps in the user's journey. More context is good for SEO.
Website integration
Finally, as a publisher, you can also integrate your webstories into your website.
Where they're placed is an internal decision based on your information architecture and the popularity of the topics. But as a tip, you can link from an appropriate category page or a dedicated landing page just for stories.
Comments
Post a Comment