Hey there! This article is a continuation of my series of articles about Web Stories that work. In the previous article, you learned how to create truly working Web Stories. And, if you have already done this, you are probably asking the question: What’s next? How do I make my Web Stories visible on Google?
Even if you plan to use Web Stories as advertising landing pages or send them o your clients in newsletters, it won’t be superfluous to take care of the SEO. After all, if your Stories get to the top of search results, or even better – to Google Discover, you will receive a huge amount of additional traffic to your site.
So, today we’ll talk about how to do it step by step.
1. Make sure you have done your prep work
In the previous article, I talked about things that need to be done at the stage of creating Web Stories for Google to like them later. In short, these are correct HTML tags, relevant meta-schemas, social card metadata, required elements for Web Stories, compression of media files. And, of course, don’t forget to check your Web Stories for validity! Invalid pages have almost no chance of being liked by Google.
2. Publish Web Stories in the right place
One of the most important criteria for the success of any web page in the search results is the domain on which it is published. An older domain with a good link profile and rate will help your Web Stories climb to the top of the search results. Therefore, if you are thinking about whether to publish Web Stories on the main domain or create a subdomain for them, it is much wiser to choose the first option.
3. Make it Snackable for Google Robots
After the publication, the most enthralling part begins – the indexing of your Web Stories by crawling Google robots. For this to happen faster and more correctly, you can help them. If there are not many Web Stories, they can be submitted for indexing through the URL Inspection Tool one at a time. If we are talking about a large bundle of Web Stories at once, it is more convenient to add them to your sitemap and submit it through Sitemaps Reports. Both tools are available in the Google Search Console.
It is also essential to make sure that you have not blocked your Web Stories from crawling with the noindex tag at the top of your pages or have not forced search robots to ignore them in the robot.txt file. If you have already made this mistake, just fix it and re-submit your Web Stories for indexing.
4. Integrate Web Stories into your website
Linking web pages is the very essence and foundation of the Internet. If you have web pages on your site that cannot be reached from other pages, it doesn’t play in your favor. Find some places for links to your Web Stories on the other pages of your website. You can create a special section with Stories on the Home page, Category pages, Listings, embed them using the AMP player on the PDP or in the Related Products section. I wrote about ways to link Web Stories with examples of how it looks here.
5. Share Web Stories on Social Media
I know that your social networks probably already have stories that Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and so on offer their users. However, you’ve probably heard about the benefits of sharing web pages on social media for their SEO. Plus, social media is a source of traffic by itself. Therefore, sharing Web Stories on social media is a great idea! It is where the social card metadata we talked about earlier comes in handy. By the way, it can and should be checked for validity too – for example, in the Twitter card validator or Sharing Debugger.
6. Set up Google Analytics
It seems that none of my articles can do without this advice. Google representatives say Google Analytics’ configuration helps to cover any potential delays in Search Console data. However, the most valuable advantage of Analytics is the ability to analyze the features of user interaction with your Web Stories. I will tell you how to set up events in Google Analytics in the next article.
And if you still haven’t created Web Stories that work for your online store or marketplace, Product Stories is ready to help you! We generate valid and truly working Web Stories directly from your product feed. To proceed to the discussion of details, fill out this form:
