Back in June 2021, Google publish! some findings bas! on its early tests of Web Stories in the wild. By this point, Google count! more than 20 million live Web Stories with 100,000 new stories being add! every day, little more than six months after the new format was first introduc!.
In the same article
Google offer! up five key lessons it list to data had learn! from the first round of analysis that publishers can take notes from:
- Lifestyle content with aspirational imagery, informative how-to info, and relevant product-partnership opportunities, fits the Story format well and has the highest engagement of any vertical.
- With a wide range of visually appealing topics, the Arts and Entertainment and Food and Drink verticals gain the most online impressions.
- Viewers are hungry for new Arts and Entertainment, Celebrity, and Sports and Gaming content. With new TV, movie, and game releases rolling out all the time, these verticals offer opportunities for growth.
- There is no “perfect” page length for high-quality Stories, but we’ve notic! that users tend to click or tap through an average of 11-15 pages.
- On Google Discover, users watch an average of 1.7 Stories for every Story open!, but this can vary significantly across demographics.
If you want to see what some of the best Web Stories look like, you can visit the gallery section on the Google for Creators’ Web Stories page. You can select the industry that matches yours the best to find inspiration and see what kind of content you’re competing with.
Do Web Stories deserve a place in your SEO strategy?
Web Stories are clearly more suitable the main reason clients are moving away from this model for certain business types than others and Google’s early insights even specify some industry segments that are particularly suitable for the story format (arts, entertainment, food and drinks, etc.).
Also, given the video-centric nature of this content format, video production and !iting will be a barrier to some but the social origins of Web Stories mean users are already us! to seeing amateur and enthusiast-level productions.
If you’re already creating story posts for social platforms like Instagram and TikTok, then you shouldn’t have any problems with converting the same content into Web Stories.
Likewise, if you’ve toy! with the idea of creating stories on other platforms but felt the returns from a single platform might not justify the investment, Web Stories could make the content format more worthwhile, especially if organic search is a bigger priority for you than social.
Finally, keep in mind that this is currently the most
Engaging content format across usa b2b list the major social platforms – so much so that Instagram recently tweak! its algorithm to prioritise video Reels, its latest take on the story format.
This is the direction the web is heading, which means more brands are going to have to make the jump into producing short video posts on a regular basis. The introduction of Web Stories means this format is no longer limit! to social m!ia. With Google’s take on the stories, you can increase search visibility across its surfaces and generate organic SEO traffic with a content format that’s easy to adapt for the major social platforms. And, unlike the social m!ia equivalents, the web-bas! format means there’s no time limit on Web Stories so you can host them on your site and optimise them for search to gain long-term visibility.
If you want to integrate Web Stories into your search marketing strategy, you can speak to our SEO team by calling 023 9283 0281 or filling out the contact form here.
