If you’ve been around the block, then you’ve probably heard of Google web stories enough.
A Google Web Stories is a tappable, interactive story experience that is powered by AMP technology that you can host on your own website. Within a Google Web Story, you can include links to your website, and CTA’s – this is what makes them worth your time!
Google Web Stories are shown on Google Discover, Google Search, and even Google Images. They have a dedicated carousel on Google Discover which makes it a pretty neat opportunity for bloggers to get amazing organic traffic from a whole new set of audiences.
And because you get to own this property and host it on your website, GWS gives you a unique opportunity to leverage an alternate SEO opportunity.
What does a Good Google Web Story look like?
Perhaps the best thing about Google Web Stories is that it allows thousands of new people to discover bloggers and creators that they otherwise might have never come across. What comes up on your Google Discover is all based on what you normally search for, and the websites you commonly interact with
Here’s an example of what a food blogger’s web stories look like on Google Discover
Web Stories are a brilliant medium to create evergreen, visual, thumb-stopping interactive content that compels people to click through to your website. And the best part is, it’s right on the platform that very few bloggers would refuse to pander to – Google.
A good web story will share the content on your blog in such a way as to pique the interest of your reader to click through to your blog post.
And so for this to work, it must be a completely, separate entity that can exist as it’s own content piece. Think of it as a teaser trailer and the movie is your blog post – the trailer that includes the most interesting pieces of information for it’s target audience will sell the most tickets for the movie.
Ok, now how do I make a Google Web Story?
- Start with choosing a blog post to make a web story on
If you’re just starting out with Google Web Stories it’s a good idea to select blogs that you already rank high for on Google. Doing this reminds Google that you are an expert on that particular topic and boosts your content even higher on Google Discover. - Getting Started
If you’ve used Canva before the WordPress Google Web Story plug-in experience would seem more intuitive to you. It’s way simpler and sometimes a little buggy but really anyone with even basic knowledge of Canva and WordPress can navigate around this plug-in.
First, go to the plug-in and choose ‘Create New Story’ or if you already have a template set up duplicate that story or choose from one of the templates within the ‘Explore Templates’ tab.
- Title Your Web Story
When deciding on a title for your story you can make it a little different from the title of your blog to avoid being in direct competition on Google. However, the chances of this happening are very very slim as web stories and blog posts are shown very differently by Google Discover and on Search (refer to the images above to see how they’re displayed for scroll).
So, for example, if your Blog post is 30+ Desserts for Valentine’s Day, you could name your web story 30+ Valentine’s Day Dessert Ideas.
- Navigating the Plug-in’s Interface
When you open the interface you will be able to navigate the interface through 3 tabs on the left-hand-side of the editor.
Insert allows you to add images from your WordPress library, free stock content, text boxes for headers and paragraphs, shapes and stickers, and individual pages from the plug-in’s template library.
In the style tab, you will find options for design, animations, and page + web story qualities. Style allows you to add animations to elements to make your web story interactive and more dynamic (keep these to a maximum of 1 animation per page or you risk a very slow page download speed), filter options for your background images – add vignettes to lighten or darken your background as required. Fill in accessibility tags for images (these are usually already filled in if you have them added to all images in your WordPress image library). Most importantly, add a CTA – this is what gets sessions back to your website. Finally, be sure to hit the no-follow link button if your CTA is an affiliate link.
The Document tab is where you add the final, finishing touches to your web story. Here you can set your story to be published immediately or schedule it to be published later (this is helpful if you want to bulk create stories for a week or even a month). Here you can add your poster image – which is what people will see first when the story is presented to them on Google Discover and your blog’s logo (you will only have to add this once). Finally and the most important part is the Story Description – this is where you add a keyword rich description of your story, the more researched your keywords the better as this increases the scope of your reach on Google Discover.
5. Creating Your Title Slide
When you open the interface you will be able to navigate the interface through 3 tabs on the left-hand-side of the editor.
Insert allows you to add images from your WordPress library, free stock content, text boxes for headers and paragraphs, shapes and stickers, and individual pages from the plug-in’s template library.
6. Web Story Content
Any web story must be a full and complete entity by itself.
This is to say that a high-converting web story is not just a teaser to your blog post but a separate content piece on its own. Ensure that your web story content is sharing enough information to keep your readers interested, while simultaneously enticing them to get more details from your CTA.
This may look like adding 5 main steps to your recipe in your web story while the more detailed steps to your recipe, shopping list, variations, and serving + freezing instructions can be found in your blog post. Or, if it is a round-up post then add 5-6 of the recipes in your roundup with short descriptions and then ask readers to head to the blog to see all of the recipes on the round-up.
See the example below
7. Linking to Your Site
The CTA is perhaps the crux of every web story – the idea is to convert web story views to website sessions. The best way to track website session conversion is to add UTM links of your blog post to the web story CTA tab. You can use a simple formula of:
campaign source = google
campaign medium = web strories
campaign name = web story title
This way, you can easily find the source of your sessions from the sessions tab on your GA4 and track the success of your webstories.
Add your UTM link here:
And track your GA4 metrics here:
7. Publishing Your Web Story
Before you hit publish on your web story, ensure you check these 5 things:
- Every page has a CTA
- Any elements that need hyperlinks are linked
- You have updated a keyword-rich web story descriptions
- The permalink is slightly different from the slug of the original blog post
- You have filled in basic meta-data
If all 5 of these points are ticked, then you are ready to publish your web story!
Want to Snag a Checklist for Maximum Success on Google Web Stories?
Now that you’ve gone through a step-by-step guide on how to create a successful google web story as a food blogger – grab the GWS publishing checklist takes you through the complete process step-by-step to set you up for maximum sessions. And it’s 100% free!