SEO & Optimization
Adding metadata
Metadata can be attached to the Web Story from the Document tab in the sidebar, and directly before publishing. This metadata includes the poster image, author, and an excerpt or description. Add thisinformation to ensure maximum compatibility with search engines and discovery features that take advantage of that metadata.
Tip: Consult the checklist to see which required metadata is missing before publishing your story.
Monetize your stories
Make money off your Web Stories by automatically inserting ads between pages. The Web Stories WordPress plugin supports both AdSense and Ad Manager integrations. You can enable these integrations in on the plugin's settings page under "Monetization".
Tip: If you use the Site Kit by Google WordPress plugin, you can set up Google AdSense there.
Once you have configured ads, you're all set! Now, the Web Stories runtime will automatically determine where and how to insert ads into the story.
Note that it can take some time for ads to trickle in if you are using AdSense. For further ad troubleshooting, use the AdSense Ad Serving troubleshooter and consult the AdSense Help.
If you are unable to access or modify the Monetization settings, please ensure that you have administrator capabilities on your site and that you are not using an ad blocker, as browser extensions hat block ads or privacy invasion trackers have been known to block these settings from displaying
Adding analytics
There are two ways to include analytics in your Web Stories:
- Add your Google Analytics tracking ID on the Web Stories settings page.
- If you use the Site Kit by Google WordPress plugin, you can set up Google Analytics there.
Note that creating a new property for Web Stories is not necessary. Web Stories uses the same site URL as the rest of your site, so you can apply the same property.
By default, the Web Stories WordPress plugin uses a recommended preset with a few select analytics events:
| Trigger | Description |
|---|---|
story_page_count | Fired once per story view. Parameters: the story title and number of pages. |
story_pages_viewed | Fired when a story page becomes visible. Parameters: the story title and viewed page index. |
story_complete | Fired when the last story page displays to the user (can be used to measure completion rate). Parameters: the story title. |
Check out the Google for Creators guide on how to viewing your Web Stories performance in Google Analytics and Data Studio.
Heading tags
When creating a web page, heading tags can be used to emphasize important text. The Web Stories editor does this for you by automatically choosing the right heading tags for your text elements depending on their size and position on the page. That means you do not have to worry about which heading tags are being used for your content.
However, in some cases you might want to override the default behavior. In the editor, you can achieve that in the Accessibility panel under the Style tab. There you can deliberately set a text element's heading level from 1-3 or mark it as a regular paragraph.
PageSpeed Insights and Core Web Vitals
Google’s PageSpeed Insights and Core Web Vitals report may make recommendations on how to improve the performance of your overall site, including Web Stories. While these recommendations are not specific to Web Stories, you can use the following suggestions to identify next steps.
Reduce initial server response time
This recommendation indicates that your site’s server is not responding quickly when a user tries to load your website. Response time can be improved by ensuring that your site is well-optimized, which can be done with caching plugins or other options for hosting-provided resources, such as setting up a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
You can improve load times specifically for Web Stories by enabling the Video Cache option in Web Stories > Settings > Video Cache and using modern image formats such as WebP for your images.
Questions about Core Web Vitals reports are generally better suited for the product experts in the Google Search Central Help Community forums, as they go beyond our support offering for the Web Stories WordPress plugin.