Stories have been one of the most successful formats in the news landscape, becoming a common factor in most of these platforms. This has shown great potential to boost the visibility and online presence of businesses and brands. For this reason, Google has decided to join this trend of temporary content in its search and discovery products, launching a new tool called . Which comes with the intention of helping websites take advantage of the momentum offered by this type of format.
How Web Stories work
As its name suggests, this tool is a version of the stories that we are used to on Instagram, but designed to enhance websites. Therefore, we can locate the Web Stories among the Google SERPS, that is, the search results on its Search platform. Or also within the Google Discover platform, dedicated to content discovery. A story carousel has even been developed to display this type of content, although at the moment it is only in beta for United States, India and .
In principle, this format works the same as its namesake on social networks, although it has certain differences, such as its duration. Since these stories developed by Google allow users to determine how long they want their content to be displayed. This instead of sticking to the strict 24-hour duration that ephemeral formats have on social networks. On the other hand, this format is powered by Google’s AMP technology, which optimizes web pages for faster loading on mobile devices.
All this, together with the various creative tools that the integration of this new format brings with it, pose an interesting future for web visibility. From this, the portal semrush has conducted a study on And not die trying.
How to do Google Web Stories in this 2021
This was done from analysis of 2,423 urls of results in the United Statesresulting in a series of discoveries in 9 key areas.
Stories contribute to a good position within the SERP
The first of the areas discovered in this study refers to to the number of stories listed within the search results. According to Semrush, the average number of stories appearing on Google Search is 3, along with an estimated average result of 4 stories backed by 1,403 results. In the same way, it seems that the number 4 is the maximum of stories found in the search, leaving 1 as the minimum. This demonstrates the use of chain stories within the strategists of this new tool.
Next, there is the positioning of these stories within the results, which according to the results obtained is considerably high within the search results. Thus, the 5th and 6th position in the results are the most common for Web Stories, with 28% and 20% respectively. The further away you are from one side or the other of these positions, the less they appear in the results.
Likewise, the presence of these stories can drive other featured search results, or even work in conjunction with them. Such as: other user questions, interesting findings, video carousel, knowledge panel, and top stories.
Travel and news niches stand out in this type of content
In total, 8,266 URLs were analyzed for this study, of which only 1,073 are unique URLs, which means that on average the same URL of a story appears in 5 different results. Despite this, 50% of the web stories evaluated have only one result. On the other hand, the study has revealed that the tourism sector takes the lead as for stories, with the amp.travel site appearing in 48% of them. Closely followed by news platform washingtonpost.com at 45%, and sports niche stories.mbl.com at 35%.
However, as we can see in the image, most of the URLs appear in a smaller number of web stories. Similarly, the highest concentration of domains, 21.4%, collects traffic from 0 to 5,000 visits. Second place in this distribution is held by 20% of domains, with traffic from 1 to 10 million users. With this, we estimate the impact of this tool in two phases, one early, in capturing traffic. And another more advanced one, with content that already maintains high traffic within web stories.
The distribution of text, web pages and images or videos influence Web Stories
The use of words in this content format must be careful, since it is primarily visual and if it is overloaded with text it could generate an effect contrary to the desired one. That is, it could alienate users and decrease the visibility of the website. In this way, within the distribution of these stories based on their number of words, less is more, with 19.5% in those with 4 to 10 words. Even so, an estimated 18.5% is located with those that have between 30 and 40 words, implying that content with a textual predominance can also be effective depending on the occasion.
On the other hand the number of web pages present in these contents is also relevant, according to the study it ranges between a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 152. In these cases, the recommendation is to bet on the least amount, in order to avoid losing user attention.
As for the visual aspectalthough video formats are in trend lately, the domain in this type of stories is of the images, with 84%. In this way, the use of static images and photographs should be taken into account when designing the marketing strategies in which this tool is going to be integrated.
keywords and call to action in web stories
Like any product present in the Google search, positioning is important, and for this one of the most important things is the keywords. In average 4 keywords are used in the construction of these web stories, which varies between short or longtail, according to the theme. Keep in mind that most of the keywords that generate this content do not have much traffic. But in specific cases, as we see in the image, they can generate stories.
In another order of ideas the CTA, or calls to action, are the main theme of the last page of the stories. Presenting itself as the final step after having hooked the user with the previous visual content, in these cases the most used phrases are: For more, To discover more, Read the article, Read more, etc. Always making clear the continuation of the content on the destination website.
Finally, the last discovered area refers to image analysis in the Web Stories, where gray and blue tones and brown/beige colors reign. A contrast, with its social media namesakes who tend to anchor their content in more colorful foundations. Likewise, in 67% of them, people are part of the main image, adding everyday objects, furniture, food or even streets or highways.
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