Category: WordPress

Google web stories (GWS) WordPress Plugin provides website owners with a method of attracting more visitors to the website. For Google, participating with the WP plugin is easier. Combined with Google web stories, your site might rank high quickly on the results pages of Google search, not just for findings but for Discover, Google App, and Google images as well.

Web stories are open-web and free. These enable you to create visual narratives easily with trappable interactions and engaging animations and absorb your readers in fast-loading and great full-screen experiences.

What Web Stories are all about?

GWS is a distinct setup of AMPs. It is the contents that they must use to take up in extremely small bits. Different pages of web stories have a total maximum of 10 words. They also have a suggested size of about 4 to 30 pages. This permits publishers to make use of connecting associations to commercialize Google Ad Manager and Google DV360 (Beta).

Google Web Stories Plugin

Web stories’ audience is mobile consumers who are looking to grasp the content immediately. Now, this content is generally illustrated by Google in the form of individuals waiting on an eatery or having a launch. Even such web stories are open source. These are officially known as AMP stories stand for a mobile device’s size and pages with the layout of a magazine. The chief content comprises 15 seconds video in portrait mode with the title, important content with a link for the complete story, including images with captions.

Advantages of Web Stories

Advertisers are attempting to embrace the online stories’ format since they display it in such a manner that attracts mobile users. In this way, the web stories become an essential method for portals to drag traffic on the site. The reason being its desirability.

The design and content of online stories have made it very apt for posting content on WordPress sites. The moment you blend the extension with your WP website, Google web stories SEO starts driving more visitors to the website. This will aid in improving your search ranking in Google app, Google images, Google Discover, and Google search.

Precisely, you can:

  1. Create engaging and beautiful content easily: Web Stories make story production as simple as possible from a technical point of view.
  2. Enjoy innovative flexibility for editorial branding and freedom: The Web Stories layout comes with pre-set but flexible format templates, systematized UI controls, and elements for adding and sharing follow-on content.
  3. Share your stories on the open web: Web Stories being a part of the open web can be embedded and shared across apps and sites without being restricted to a single ecosystem.
  4. Capture your readers’ attention by providing speedy loading times to your stories: Web Stories are extremely fast so that your audience remains entertained and engaged.
  5. Measure and track your stories: Bookend capabilities and supports analytics for monetization and viral sharing.
  6. Monetize effectively the engaging and beautiful stories created by you: Web Stories permit monetization potential for publishers using connecting links. For advertisers, Stories are a way of reaching a unique audience within a fresh storytelling experience.

Google Web Stories WordPress Plugin

The cause of Google’s announcement of this WP extension is to make sure that publishers are in the position to use the web stories’ format for attracting more traffic. As per the writers, the fact that the WordPress plugin and web stories plugin are in their nascent and growing stages is worth noting.

Easy to Consume Content

‘Easy to consume content’, is what Google considers the core of the online (web) story. The rule is that the videos must not be more than 15 seconds and must include subtitles. Also, as per Google, it should be shot in portrait mode and not in landscape mode. This makes displaying the picture easier on the full screen of handheld devices.

You should include captions for the videos to permit the users to understand when they browse the video. The reason behind this is that they presume that at some point, the users, might not be comfortable listening to the video. For example, they might be in open or public areas where their attention can be divided easily, captions will help in such situations. You can include a link for the long-form content. So, if the user finds the article engaging, you can encourage them to through the entire article.

Always Remember

Web stories are now a cool latest addition to the arsenal of your content. No doubt that not everyone will find these stories useful, but you must look at the probabilities.
Here are a few things you need to remember:

  1. Ensure that your stories’ URLs are there in your XML sitemap (this will be done for you by Yoast SEO).
  2. Attach Schema structured data to make it simpler for Google to have a clear idea of your stories (this will be done for you by Yoast SEO).
  3. Ensure that your stories are of high quality and valuable
  4. You might add ads, but make sure that you do not overdo it
  5. Do not add excessive links to the outside sources as that can distract readers
  6. Keep the story snappy and short (As per Google 5-30 pages)
  7. Keep a short title
  8. Don’t make use of excessive text on pages
  9. Add alt text to delineate images for accessibility

Why Download GWS WordPress Plugin?

As it is still in its early stages, it does not have all its functionalities. It might have some bugs as well. However, it can be used to produce a sample site to get acquainted with the plugin. It will enable you to ensure the final version when the full-featured version will be released.

Configuring the GWS WordPress Plugin

The earlier version of this plugin is freely obtainable here. A nice thing about this early version is in public beta which means that it is packed with all those features we expect to see in the ultimate version. Features like better stabilization, bugs, and other fixes, and other page links are expected in the final version.

The procedure of installing this plugin is,

  1. Go to Stories GitHub Page for downloading the plugin
  2. Visit WordPress enter in plugins → Add New.
  3. Hit to upload plugin.
  4. Select the file from your laptop or source.
  5. Now “Install.”

Once you receive the notification about the successful installation of your plugin, activate the plugin.

A must-read: Detailed Guide On Custom WordPress Plugin Development

Synopsis

In case you have the website but not sure whether the Google web stories WordPress plugin is that useful, the reply in short is – yes, it is definitely for your business. This plugin has a great hit graph of around 5.6 billion searches regularly, hence, if your online stories have to outperform in SERPs, it must have great click-through rates, which hardly takes a few minutes. It is better to hire a WordPress plugin development services company to make the best use of these online stories to grab more traffic and better ROI.