By blurring the lines between video and SEO, the arrival of Google Web Stories is predicted to be a gamechanger with how brands approach content marketing.
For those at the very early stages of their content marketing journey, it’s probably wise to keep your attention firmly on the traditional practices used to attract organic traffic through SEO, such as sharpening up your blogging skills.
However, for those who are more seasoned or feel slightly bolder, getting familiar with Google Web Stories is set to be a gamechanger for content marketing. Let’s not forget that the Silicon Valley tech giant is still running a business, so by learning through the social media platforms that they might even identify as competition, this new form of content could well break the internet.
A Beginner’s Guide To Google Web Stories
According to recent statistics released from Wyzol, a whopping 87% of businesses are using videos as a part of their brand’s content strategy. Interestingly enough, of those businesses, 83% are reporting that video content is giving them a strong return on investment.
As we all know, getting a good bang for your buck is the ultimate end goal for all marketing strategies, and the above figures may help to explain the rapid rise of short form video platforms such as TikTok. However, other old school platforms like Facebook and Instagram have also introduced their own versions of highly consumable video distribution, otherwise known as Stories.
Somewhat inevitably, Google is the next platform to jump on the bandwagon – with their own unique spin of course. For the unfamiliar, Google Web Stories are a visually rich, full-screen content format for the web, which allows users to tap or swipe through stories, just like they would on social media. Google supports Web Stories, so you might find them across Google searches and Discover.
However, there’s one major advantage that using Google Web Stories for business has on social media, and that’s SEO. Once you install the plugin to your CMS of choice, users can start producing stories for Google that feature all the hallmarks of traditional SEO, such as titles, scheme types, alt text for images, and other metadata.
In addition, the ability to post them on your own site is what makes them different from other social media story experiences, as it makes them fully indexable, or searchable to anyone using Google.
For bonus points, brands can also include links, calls to action, and AdWords in Google Web Stories, in a format that’s much easier to track engagement, clicks, and overall return on investment. The best part? They don’t disappear within twenty-four hours, meaning that businesses have the opportunity to produce evergreen content, or the gift that keeps on giving.
As Google Web Stories can be anywhere between five and thirty pages in length, use this opportunity to fill individual story panels with articles, videos, graphics, and as many other content marketing formats as you like. Ultimately, this new age form of content allows brands to create a new type of narrative that users can click through to experience the story you want to tell.
Regardless of how much experience you have under your belt, producing content that’s SEO friendly is hard. Most people identify as either technical wizards, gifted visual gurus or natural born writers, but rarely ever is it all three. If your brand is struggling to produce top notch content that Google deems worthy enough to showcase, it might be time to consider outsourcing.
The Key To Good Marketing Is Great Content
Producing quality, consistent and on brand content takes time, effort, experience and resources, but avoiding these responsibilities altogether may actually be doing your brand a disservice. Thankfully, investing in a solid content marketing strategy has actually never been easier.
Here at Content Hive, producing top quality digital content is exactly what we do best. We have itemised a list of digital content services, and allocated credits next to each of these. This means that each month, you can use your credits with us to produce digital content such as blog articles, social media posts, videos and even animated Instagram stories. By using this model, we believe that it enables us to produce high quality content with faster delivery times.
If you aren’t quite sure where to start on your digital marketing journey and would like to speak to a professional, why not book in a free discovery call with us at Content Hive today to discuss how we can get your brand buzzing online.
