This shift comes after years of Google pushing AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) as a key ranking signal for Google News publishers.

Suffice it to say, times have changed.

While many SEO outlets predicted that this effectively marks the end of AMP, Mediavine decided to put this theory to the test with The Hollywood Gossip.

Our very own celebrity gossip site passes Page Experience on mobile and desktop, and gets significant traffic from Google News, making it a good test case.

We officially removed AMP from THG on December 9, 2021, and have been monitoring traffic, search rankings and revenue ever since. The conclusion?

AMP is dead. And unlike when Miley Cyrus killed pageviews, she was not the perpetrator. 

If anything, the teen crooner turned twerking, tongue-wagging pop star helped push THG to run AMP in the first place. So she’s more like an accomplice.

Don’t blame Miley, though. This time it’s Trellis coming in like a wrecking ball.

What This Means For Publishers

For publishers not in Google News, you can safely kill AMP immediately, if not sooner.

The benefits of AMP have pretty much always been strongest for Google News publishers, as they’ve been eligible for the top articles carousel.

Now that Core Web Vitals and Page Experience are good enough for those same Google carousels, the use case for AMP is virtually gone.

NOTE: More importantly, if you aren’t in Google News, get in there. Thanks to the recently launched Google Publisher Center, it’s easier than ever to submit your site.

To be in Google News, you don’t actually need to be a news website. The Hollywood Gossip is not The Hollywood News, after all. (Food Fanatic and TV Fanatic are in there, as well.) Perhaps “News” is a misnomer and it should be called Google Today or Google Lifestyle?

But that’s for an Internet Giant even bigger than Mediavine to assess, not us. Anyway. Now that everyone is a Google News publisher, back to our regularly scheduled program.

Can I Fire AMP Literally Today?

Whoa. Deep breaths. Before you officially axe AMP, you need to be passing Core Web Vitals and Page Experience, ideally on both mobile and desktop. Are you?

Find out with our Page Experience checklist. If you have technical resources, we have a great step-by-step guide on how we did this for The Hollywood Gossip and Food Fanatic.

If you don’t, we have a great WordPress theme framework that does this for you. Perhaps you’ve heard us mention Trellis?

Next Steps

There are no next steps once you’ve removed AMP from your site. No need to notify Google of anything.

As long as your website is submitting to Google News, you’re properly setting Article Schema, and are passing Page Experience, your traffic should stay the same, or even increase, as was the case with THG.

More importantly, since non-AMP pages are eligible to run the full set of Mediavine ads, including the Universal Player, your RPMs should increase.

Sound too good to be true? Still nervous to take the plunge? Wait until we show you the results from our THG experiment!

What Happened When We Ditched AMP

First, let’s head to Google Search Console, to see what happened to our Search Appearance.

Under Performance > Search Results, let’s check on Search Appearance below. Clicking on AMP Article, you’ll see a decline. 

However, you should notice a huge jump in “Good page experience,” which are the pages replacing AMP.

In fact, Google offers a chart which compares them; you can see how we more than made up for the lack of AMP in Google Search results:

As for actual Google News traffic? 

That’s more complicated, since for many sites, traffic is seasonal or just plain unpredictable, e.g. heavily based on what Ye is saying about Kim that day.

If you do a rough comparison, though, there wasn’t much of a dip; you’ll see that for the most part, it’s been pretty consistent.

Spoiler: if things weren’t working, traffic would have plummeted. The slight drop you’re seeing is simply just due to a slow news (gossip?) week. 

Since Google Discover and organic search can also show AMP, if you have those pages, let’s do a quick ranking check there as well.

Discover is a little tricky since we didn’t really have 2020 traffic for a YoY comparison, but if you look at 12/9 before and after, you won’t see a significant loss.

If anything, CTR went up after taking down AMP, while the impressions and clicks continued to ebb and flow as Discover always does:

As far as organic traffic goes, we again saw no drop from 12/10 onwards in position, and if anything, there’s been an increase in rankings after the switch.

In short, it’s pretty safe to say we had no noticeable decrease in regular Google Search, Google News, or Discover.

If anything, one could argue we went up in all three. But that’s not where the biggest gains were or why we’re celebrating the death of AMP on THG. Let’s talk $$$.

RPM Impact

Disclaimer: Every website’s traffic is different. 

Disclaimer #2: Comparison is the thief of joy.

With that said, on The Hollywood Gossip, our Smartphone and Tablet traffic has monetized nearly 2.5x better than it did with AMP.

Some sites may see an even higher differential. There are many factors involved, but the increased number of ads you’ll be able to run now vs. with AMP make this a no-brainer.

THG is only one site, but it makes a compelling case. Nearly 25% of its traffic was flowing to AMP. That kind of boost on that amount of traffic has made a material difference.

With a near 60% increase in RPM, you can see why we’re shouting it from the rooftops.

TL;DR

AMP is Dead.

Spending the time (or installing Trellis) to pass Page Experience is worth it. So is applying to Google News, if you haven’t already.

The post AMP is Dead. Miley Cyrus Was Only Loosely Involved. appeared first on Mediavine.

I’m always surprised to see the ongoing popularity of this post, fittingly titled “Ad Revenue By The Seasons,” and its relevance to publisher earnings ever since it was first published.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised though. History tends to repeat itself, as the saying goes, and in our case, the advertising industry proves no exception.

In this edition of Behind the Numbers with Brad (BTNWB), we’re diving into seasonality once more, this time with a definitive guide to specific dates (and printable eCPM prediction calendar!) to keep in mind throughout the year.

The beauty of being in the publishing world for 15+ years and representing nearly 8,000 sites in nearly every lifestyle niche that exists is that Mediavine has data.

Billions and billions of points of data.

Again, history repeats itself, even during the trying times of a pandemic. Life as we know it has changed in many ways, but spending patterns around major holidays and events — and lower spending patterns around the ends of fiscal quarters and years — persist.

In order to outline the exact dates that you, a publisher, should focus on to optimize content and earnings, I’ve teamed up with Cynthia, Director of Mediavine’s Business Intelligence team (a.k.a. the keeper of the data), to isolate the hottest (and coolest) days of the year.

So to speak. These don’t always correlate with the weather outside.

To arrive at these “hot or not” days, we’ve analyzed eCPMs by calendar day, using the last few years for comparison. Mediavine calculates eCPM by looking at the average CPM and multiplying it by the fill rate on an individual day.

CPM and fill rate are both heavily influenced by increased competition, which results from advertisers eagerly positioning themselves to get in front of the right audiences during the periods of higher consumer spending, such as holidays.

Without further ado, here’s our eCPM guide for 2021!

(If you’d prefer a printable version, we got you! Print either the color or grayscale PDF to pin to the wall behind your desk. You can also find them in this Google Drive Folder for easy cloud storage.)

The beautiful graphic above, put together by the amazing graphic designers on the Marketing team, is a perfect illustration of each quarter and month, complete with major holidays and events associated with each and how low or high we would expect eCPMs to be.

Going forward, this will be my favorite graphic to reference as we move through the year, and as a publisher it should be high on your list as well because it beautifully illustrates the best days of each month (and each month does have them), from the slower times of January (new quarter, new year) to late November (holidays).

As you can see, it also clearly illustrates how the end of the month is almost always better than the beginning of the month, no matter the time of year.

So, how can you put this graphic to use as a publisher?

First, print it out. Now, laminate it, and hang it above your desk, on the refrigerator or on the mirror. I mostly kid but not entirely.

Think of this as your content roadmap for the rest of the year. Take a look at the upcoming days with the best eCPMs, and look back at your previous content.

Is your content relevant to the holiday or events around those days?

For example, did you have a recipe or travel post that performed really well last year around Memorial Day? 

If so, shine that post up! Add images, link to relevant content or even just break up those larger paragraphs into smaller paragraphs to maximize your advertising real estate. 

Focus on promoting that post ahead of the days in question and allow that momentum to carry you into the highest earning day of that holiday cycle.

Don’t have a post for that holiday? Well, now you know when to create one. Make and push out some new content to capitalize on the traffic and earnings when eCPMs are highest.

At Mediavine, we are always challenging our publishers to make the most of their hard earned traffic, and using this seasonal data is a powerful tool in your arsenal.

We hope that the data acquired and organized into this amazing graphic helps you meet the challenges throughout the year to make 2021 your best yet.

The post Best Days of the Year (with Printable) —Behind the Numbers with Brad appeared first on Mediavine.

As an avid Android user, Google Discover is one of the main ways I consume content on a daily basis because Discover is a curated collection of articles from around the web that Google’s algorithms know I will be interested in.

This is all based on my search habits, the things I ask Google Assistant or sometimes even say around my phone.

It can be amazingly useful at times, especially when I’m bleary-eyed but I want to make pancakes for my kids at 7 a.m. If I talked about it the night before, it’s likely a few web stories about pancakes will be in my Google Discover without me ever having to type a search term into my browser.

And my favorite thing about Google Discover? Seeing Web Stories of content I haven’t read yet, from bloggers I know and love. (Psst that’s you.)

Stories aren’t live in every country, so if you haven’t seen them on your Android or iPhone yet don’t worry! They’ll be coming soon.

Here’s an example on an iPhone:

Over the Christmas holiday I had the opportunity to play around with Web Stories and see how they can drive traffic to a site right away, which is huge! A part of Google you can affect right now.

The best way to explain Web Stories is… imagine if your highly-ranked blog post and Instagram stories had a baby. You’ve now got an evergreen, extremely visual and interactive way to reach someone interested in a specific topic.

Unlike those other platforms, let me say again – Web Stories are meant to be evergreen, or live forever. That means they should tell a full story on their own, for the best user experience.

As Eric described in his post, you can also think of a Web Story as preview for your post content, to an entirely new audience.

From Mediavine’s perspective, ideally any Web Story will be compelling enough to get the viewer from the Story to your actual blog post.

This will earn much more money for you as opposed to being served AMP ads in a Web Story, though you can potentially do both, depending on your website setup. Make sure you email us if you have questions!

We’d like you to think of this the way you do your newsletter audience; tell them a compelling story, but also get those viewers onto your site to see ads. To us, it’s better to do that than it is to try to monetize this very unique, engaged Web Story space.

The viewers don’t have to follow you; they just have to be interested in the topic you’ve got a Web Story about.

According to Google, “You’ll find more videos and fresh visual content, as well as evergreen content — articles and videos that aren’t new to the web, but are new to you.”

To me, that means the Story lives forever, so if the content you’re planning a Story around is evergreen, make sure that Story is timeless, or update it often for seasonality.

It is possible you’ll see a Story “drop out” of popularity overnight, but that may mean the search trend is done for the season on the Story’s topic. It doesn’t mean the Story will never be served again, or that it won’t become relevant again when the search trend picks back up again.

Web Stories can be used by any type of blogger, around any type of content. The first thing I suggest is using Google Discover to see how other content creators are using Stories.

For example, Google mentions Refinery29 in their blog post about the best Web Stories.

There are fabulous clues for how to make evergreen content that resonates with an interested Discover reader, no matter when they’re served the Story — today or next holiday season.

And, as Eric pointed out, having Web Stories for articles you already rank well for can remind Google that you’re an expert in the topic and may even help you rise higher in search results, which might then help your content show up more often in Discover.

It’s important to remember that a Web Story should be a solid piece of content that can stand on its own. Tell the full story, even if you want to compel readers to visit your site too.

CONTENT IS STILL KING.

There are a couple ways to make a Web Story. There are third-party apps like Jumprope that cater specifically to Google Web Stories, and if you’re using a non-WordPress CMS to run your blog, you’ll need to use one of those.

For WordPress users, there is an official plugin that was released by Google itself, and that is what I’m here to teach you about today!

I’m going to assume that you’ve already read Eric’s post, set up a separate Google Analytics profile for your stories and excluded the _gl parameter from your view settings, downloaded the Web Stories WordPress plugin and are ready to generate UTM codes for each Story’s URL.

If you haven’t, please hit up his post first!

Let’s Get Started!

If you’ve used Photoshop or Canva, you might find the user interface of the Web Stories plugin familiar. I’ve spent years in both, so I found the interface straightforward, if a little clunky and buggy. It’s brand new, so don’t go too hard on ‘em!

I am a food blogger, so I tell my best stories about food. Since I haven’t blogged in a while, Jamie, our Influencer Marketing Coordinator, was kind enough to let me borrow her blog and content to learn — now I’m sharing our experiments with you.

Here’s Jamie’s Story for Easy Hot Ham and Cheese Sliders that we are going to be making together:

Add A New Story

First things first, name your Story. As Eric said, pick a name for your story that makes sense for your keyword, but is enticing for the reader. It’s the first thing they’ll see, along with your cover image.

The main thing is to avoid Google filtering out one of your results with its “duplicate name” filter, so make sure your Story title is slightly different from your post name.

Working In Layers

Photoshop users will be very familiar with the idea of layers, as that’s a key component of design in that program. Each Story slide you’re working on contains its own layers to create dynamic content from slide to slide.

Layers will vary by type, from images to text to shapes to videos, and each layer will get its own settings and details, but each slide you create contains a locked background layer.

You can access any layer’s settings in the Layer Editor by selecting it in the lower right corner. The settings appear in the upper right.

You may need to scroll up and down within the individual settings area to see all the options.

Pro Tip: If you want a call to action or “swipe up” feature on every slide that links to the blog post, set it now on your first slide’s background layer, in the section called Page Attachment. When you duplicate the slide to make your next one, the link will remain and you can delete the other layers and begin fresh. Make sure the link you add here contains a UTM code, so that you can see how much of your traffic to a post is coming directly from a Web Story.

Calls to action take up space (so that they can grab attention!) and putting them in place FIRST helps make sure you’re not creating a slide design that doesn’t work well with where the CTA is placed.

You can’t change the CTA location, so adding it later might mean redesigning the whole slide.

You can create your next slide by “duplicating” your first one, which means the CTA will stay in place as you continue to design.

Layers allow you to work individually with each content piece and move it, change it, etc. without affecting the layers around it unless those layers are selected too.

Adding Text To Slides

Adding text directly to slides using the Web Stories application is best practice. If you upload an image with text already on it, that text will not be accessible for differently-abled viewers. The Web Stories tool makes sure the text is accessible for those viewers.

Remember that Google’s advice is to use roughly 10 words or 280 characters per slide.

Font choices are limited to those Google has provided, but there’s enough here to keep your viewers interested.

I’ll also pull out an old design adage from my college graphic design classes: Don’t use more than three different fonts per slide, and consider that in this small space, two might be your max for great design that readers find appealing.

Access Your Media Library

While Google does recommend photos with a 3:4 aspect ratio, it doesn’t seem to affect the success of the overall performance if you grab what you have in your Media Library and stretch or shrink it to fit.

This is where Canva users will feel some familiarity with the plugin; adding photos is extremely similar.

You can also use Shapes (one of the content layer types) as Masks for your photos. What does that mean?

Place a shape on your slide. Then add a photo from your Media Library and move it around until it’s hovering over the shape. The application should attempt to fit the photo inside the shape. This is another way to get versatile with what the slides look like.

Pro Tip: Make sure there is alt text on any photo you upload. The Stories app should pull in the alt text you’ve already got in WordPress, but if you need to make changes, do so.

Also note: there is an acknowledged bug (confirmed in the WP Support forums) in the Stories app that will tell you there’s no accessible text when there is. Google is actively working to fix this.

Animations & GIFs

Just like when creating a PowerPoint or Google Slides deck, you can quickly and easily add animations to any layer of your slide — this includes photos, text, etc. Doing so can make your story a bit more engaging.

You’ll notice I did this on slide 1 for the ham and cheese sliders, adding a slide-in animation to the post title and a “drop” to the Happy New Year GIF since we were targeting this to New Year searches.

Since then, we’ve updated the story to remove the “New Year” aspect so that if it’s served to new viewers they aren’t considering it outdated.

There are quite a few options to choose from in the Layer editor, and you can even change the amount of time the effect lasts. 

My best advice is to play with these things. Preview your Story with guesses as to what will look best and then adjust from there. You’ll find a style and form that works for you and your audience.

Other Features of The Layer Editor

The ability to change alignment, orientation, size, position and opacity are available for each layer, as well as the ability to hyperlink any layer.

Additionally, for text you can change fonts, add fill or highlight behind the text; add borders around text and access all the traditional formatting options like bold, italics and underline; adjust kerning and padding around and between letters; change the color of the text.

For images, you can change the corner radius (to make rounded edges), add a border or link and add accessibility text.

Document Editor

Before you ever publish a Story, you must make sure this section in the Story Editor is filled out completely.

Add your Logo. You can also add this in Story Editor Settings so that it’s automatically there in each Web Story you create.

Add a Poster Image. Typically we pick our favorite vertical hero image from the post.

Story descriptions seem a lot like meta data you would write for post content. You have 200 characters to describe the Story, so use your keyword and make it enticing! According to a sub-note in the Story Editor, “Stories with a description tend to do better on search and have a wider reach.”

Permalinks are automatically created when you type a Story’s name. If you changed the name at any point, or want something different, change the permalink before you publish.

Page advancement! This one is important. It’s how you speed up or slow down auto-advancement of your Story when it is viewed.

I don’t see a reason why anyone would ever choose “manual” here (that means someone has to click or tap the screen to see the next slide), but paying attention to how your Story flows is a good idea. If the advancement is too slow, your viewers might get bored and keep scrolling their Discover feed instead of waiting for your next slide.

If it’s too fast, they can’t read what’s on the slide or have to hold it in position until they’re finished reading, and that’s not a good experience either. Play with this based on your individual Story and what you’ve added content-wise so that it flows in a way that feels good to you.

You’re ready to publish!

Go through the notifications on the Checklist tab and make sure there are no glaring errors that would prevent someone from reaching your Story. Preview your Story to make sure it flows and that the call to action links where you want it to.

Hit Publish. Then, visit the URL for the Web Story and grab the permalink. Go to the original post and link to the Web Story somewhere in your content, where it fits naturally, on the keyword you’re targeting.

Adding a link to even a highly ranking post shouldn’t affect it negatively in SERPs, but you can always roll it back if the change seems to have upset the Google algorithm gods. Internal linking is such an important part of SEO strategy, having the link there should only help, not hurt.

You’ve published your first Story! Hooray!

Now What?

When you view the separate analytics profile set up for Web Stories, you should be able to see what is getting the most traffic. In your main analytics profile, if you’re using UTM codes, you’ll be able to see specifically how your Web Stories are converting into actual pageviews on your website.

It can’t be overstated — converting Google Discover traffic into a pageview on your website is incredibly valuable. Those are dialed in, interested readers already looking for content like yours.

Monetization of Web Stories

Web Stories can be monetized via AMP ads, but our opinion for now is that you’ll get far more value from your reader if you can convert them over to your website to see display ads there.

Web Stories are still in alpha, making monetization currently a very manual process, with not a lot of availability from advertisers.

Web Stories use AMP ads, which mean they’ve currently only got access to AdExchange, rather than having competition from a multitude of partners like your website display ads. Less competition means lower CPMs.

The AMP ads are only allowed to appear once every seven slides — which means your Story would have to be at least that long to serve even one ad.

Given that Stories are only live in the US, India and Brazil, advertising competition and availability will be even further diminished, meaning ROI on running an ad in your stories is hardly worth it. Get viewers to your website instead through quality story-telling.

Make sure you’re running Grow to capture them as logged-in users who favorite your content and they’ll be even more valuable — and very likely repeat readers.

I am hopeful that this inspires you to create your own Story, no matter what kind of content you Create.

How To Create A Google Web Story

Yield: 1 Google Web Story

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Active Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Difficulty: Easy

A Google Web Story can bring new-to-you, engaged readers to your site. Make them for your top content and new content that readers might be searching for.

Print

Materials

• Photos
• Blog post
• Video relevant to blog post content (optional)
• Short descriptions

Tools

• Google's Web Stories Plugin for WordPress

Instructions

1. Plan out your story. Using a storyboard format can be helpful here.
2. Set the "Call to Action" link on the background layer of your first slide in the Page Attachment section. (This allows slides duplicated from the first one to automatically have this in place, and shows the call to action button on your slide as you design, so that you can design around it.)
3. Make slides for each point in your storyboard. Use a combination of images, text, shapes and video to engage viewers in Google Discover. Make sure all items that need it have accurate alt-text.
4. Check that all items in the "Document" tab are complete, and any errors in the Checklist tab are remedied to the best of your ability.
5. Publish!
6. Take the permalink from your story and make sure to link back to it in any post content on your site where it makes sense to. i.e. if you make a web story about the best places to eat in San Francisco and you have multiple blog posts about things to do in San Francisco, link to your web story in them!

The post How to Make A Google Web Story appeared first on Mediavine.

The past year not only tested our resolve; it forever changed the way that we live — and the landscape of the industry we depend on.

Fewer seats at restaurants led to more cooking, travel restrictions nixed our vacations and more time on our hands led to many new hobbies.

Some of our pandemic-driven behaviors have become the new “normal” now; others not so much. Hopefully toilet paper collecting will be considered so 2020.

As a group of content creators who are also parents, teachers, mentors, hobbyists and a mosaic of our society to which the average person can easily relate, Mediavine publishers certainly experienced the ups and downs of this year first hand.

In this edition of Behind the Numbers with Brad (BTNWB, an amazing acronym that is going to take off in 2021), let’s take a look back at 2020 from a web traffic perspective.

We previously explored the Covid traffic topic using data from Mediavine publishers in early July, and it’s worth revisiting again as we continue to see evidence of a world that is tapping into the content of bloggers like never before.

Our Director of Business Intelligence, Cynthia Butler, analyzed how Mediavine publisher traffic trends have changed from one year to the next using session data and our internal site level categorizations. I’ve highlighted some of these trends below.

Food and Drink

Our Food & Drink sites saw a huge increase in traffic shortly after the near-universal Covid shutdowns — a period we’re categorizing as mid-March to early April — and many of these newfound culinary artisans stuck with it. Traffic for these sites more than doubled year over year.

Some of their traffic tapered off in the summer months as restrictions were lifted, food delivery apps caught up with demand and more outdoor dining options were available, but we’re still seeing about a 10% increase from 2019 since October.

Education

The education traffic trend paints a picture of a world where parents were trying to keep the kids busy, active and learning all spring and summer. As soon as the fall school year began (even if that meant virtually) we saw that traffic quickly drop off.

A large portion of this traffic is also likely due to hard-working teachers putting lesson plans together and trying to figure out how to teach our children during this very unique time.

Health and Fitness

One of my personal favorites, and a category that tells a great story, is our health and fitness traffic, which saw slight decreases when Covid first hit.

Between gym closures, colder weather and a general inclination not to leave the house, traffic noticeably dipped before rebounding over the spring and summer.

Those trends held relatively stable until early November, when perhaps web users began thinking about New Year’s resolutions and/or shedding some extra pounds in anticipation of holiday get-togethers (“the Covid-19” or “the Quaran-15” if you will).

As you can see, this traffic is currently spiking, and with the actual New Year upon us, there’s no reason to think it won’t continue for at least a few more weeks.

Travel

I say this in every BTNWB post and this time is no different; no niche was more negatively impacted than our travel sites in 2020 — for obvious reasons.

Traffic bottomed out with a near 60% decrease year over year during peak shutdowns, but for travel publishers there is some good news to be found.

You can already see a slow but steady rebound inching closer to 2019 levels above. With Covid vaccines increasing in availability and, if things progress from a public health standpoint, 2021 could be a big year for this category due to all the pent-up demand.

I’ve included an interactive chart below that outlines all of the different website categorizations we work with at Mediavine. Each tells an interesting story of our changing landscape, and I encourage you to browse around and try to figure out the trends for each.

Obviously, no one knows what 2021 will bring, but the Mediavine team and I look forward to continuing providing insights as we move through a new year.

Without question 2020 data will be fascinating to look back on in the rearview mirror, and for data nerds like myself, I’ll take that as a silver lining. That, along with the 170 extra rolls of toilet paper in my garage.

All kidding aside, Mediavine is always here to provide support and stand behind our mission to help content creators not only survive but prosper despite whatever factors — from industry changes and regulations to economy altering events — come our way.

The post 2020 Year in Review Sessions by Category — Behind The Numbers with Brad appeared first on Mediavine.

As you may have heard in the news or from other publishers, Google’s AMP story format has recently been rebranded.

Welcome, Google Web Stories!

Stories are all the rage online these days, and with this new name change, they’ve at last become a “first class citizen” over at Google.

Web Stories will have their own dedicated carousel in Google Discover, which means a whole new opportunity for publishers to position their content for coveted, organic search traffic.

So how do you build Web Stories for Google and optimize them for SEO? Glad you asked, because we’ve got answers for you with the return of Mediavine’s SEO Like A CEO series below!

What Are Google Web Stories?

Google Web Stories are mini-AMP pages, or embeds that you create for posts on your site. They end up looking like the visual slideshows you’ve likely seen grow in popularity on Facebook and Instagram stories.

Think of Stories as a series of quick images or videos that a user can flip through and, well, tell the story you want to tell.

When it’s over, there’s a nice little Call to Action (CTA) that can encourage audiences to visit your site for additional information.

How Do You Make Web Stories?

If your website is powered by WordPress, you’re in luck.

Google has released an official Web Story plugin for WordPress, and that’s literally all you need to make Web Stories. It’s a great little drag-and-drop interface that includes templates to help get you started.

We’ll save the full web stories tutorial for a Amber’s blog post, and Google has some great documentation on the plugin to walk you through that part too.

Once you create the story, the plugin makes a new Web Story custom post for you to publish – though it won’t appear on your homepage feed.

So where does this post live, and how do you start getting traffic to it? That’s where this guide fits in.

How Do You Get Traffic To Web Stories?

Web Stories live on their own mini-pages within WordPress, and you don’t actually have to embed them or send them traffic yourself.

In fact, you don’t want to.

We’ll talk a little more about ads for Web Stories in a bit, but in short, they will not monetize as well as a regular blog post.

You want to use Web Stories to augment your blog post, and make readers want to read it as well as enjoy your web story. You do not want to divert traffic from the blog post to its Web Story.

For that reason, we do not recommend embedding Web Stories.

The goal is to bring in thousands of new visitors to Web Stories from Google Discover. Then, the CTA at the end of those stories will entice readers to visit your site, where your ads are optimized.

Sound good? We had a feeling it would. Follow this short guide to Web Story SEO to make it happen.

1. Create Stories For Top Posts First

This may seem counterintuitive, as you obviously want to rank on your latest content. However, this follows my usual mantra:

If Google thinks you’re an expert on a particular topic, they’re going to think you’re an expert in a Web Story about it.

Creating Web Stories for a top post is the same strategy as making a Recipe Card or a video for it. Think of it as an ad for your content.

The reason you’re doing this is twofold. One, you’re likely to rank well on that Web Story and two, this is a NEW spot for Google to show off your expertise.

It’s additional traffic in Google Discover you wouldn’t have received with your organic ranking alone. Even if you’re already ranked #1 for a particular article, it’s still a net gain of new traffic!

According to Casey Markee of Media Wyse, publishers are already seeing serious results from Web Stories.

Markee, who recommends bloggers create stories for their top 3-10 posts, says “the results have been fantastic … I had one blogger who generated 20,000 clicks from Google in ONE DAY from stories.”

To give you an idea of the potential here, another blogger he spoke of has generated 50,000+ sessions in December with Web Stories thus far!

2. Don’t Embed Web Stories in Posts

While Google recommends that publishers embed the Web Story in your posts, I don’t actually like this tactic, and I’ll explain why.

First, featuring the embed is going to slow down your page.

Additionally, if you create Stories the way we’re encouraging – and the way in which they make the most logical sense for both user experience and ad monetization – they’re previews of your content. Putting that preview within the content itself doesn’t serve any purpose.

Finally, and most importantly, you simply don’t have to. If you’re running the plugin, each story gets its own permalink on your site, and its own chance to rank. You do not need to embed them to rank, so don’t.

3. Link to Your Web Story

Google also recommends “deeply integrating Stories” in ways such as linking to them from your homepage or relevant category pages.

That’s definitely a great idea if you have static homepages or category pages, where it’s easy to add unique content, like on Trellis.

If you don’t have an easy way to link from relevant categories, or end up with too many Stories for this to be practical, I have an easier solution.

As with regular organic search, Google is trying to learn about the Story based on what external and internal links go to it.

Can you guess what content will be the most similar to the Story you’re writing? That’s right, the post you’re telling a story about.

Linking to Stories from posts you’re writing them about will definitely help Google find them, without the disadvantages of embedding.

4. Link to Your Web Story Landing Page

Google also wants publishers to create a separate Web Story landing page, which will feature links to all of your Web Stories, and then link to that landing page from your homepage.

I recommend going with the default landing page WordPress makes for custom post types (e.g. yourblog.com/web-stories).

Chances are, the page won’t look pretty, but it will get the links you need. So try linking to this page in your sidebar – less prevalent than your top navigation, but still noticeable enough to get the job done.

Think back to my site structure post. Your goal is to keep the landing page one click from your homepage, so Web Stories are two clicks from the homepage. (Google and SEO Like a CEO, intersecting as always.)

5. Submit Your Web Story XML Sitemap to Google

Assuming you’re running a plugin like Yoast to generate XML Sitemaps, you should have one for Web Stories. It will likely be at yourblog.com/web-story-sitemap.xml.

If not, make sure to configure your SEO plugin to generate these and submit it via the Google Search Console.

6. Naming Your Web Stories

This one is a little trickier, because you obviously know it’s important to optimize the page title for SEO, but it’s also important to remember to avoid creating duplicate page titles on your website.

Your goal is just not to trigger the Google Search duplicate title filter. Pick a name that makes sense for the keyword you’re targeting, but isn’t the name of your post. Make sure it’s enticing for the viewer, because they will see your title in Discover, over the cover image of your story.

7. Content is Still King

Google says the secret to a Web Story ranking is still all about content. In Google’s best practices advice, they recommend 10-20 slides, keeping the content per slide brief, and keeping it visual, with plenty of images and videos that fill up the screen.

They’ve since expanded on that with this article on what a web story should be.

• Make the story have value for the reader all on its own.
• Stories that are only 2-3 slides long and force the reader to the website for any useful information about the proposed topic is NOT good user experience.
• Stories that convey information about a post from a different angle can be great – such as a “making of” for a recipe or craft post.
• Stories should make sense and have a logical beginning and end.

As usual, with any “content is king” strategy, it also means you need to make a lot of content. Create stories for all of your top posts, then consider a Web Story for any new post you create as well.

Yes, it’s work, but once you see the traffic, you’ll find it’s worth it.

8. Use All the Rest of Our SEO Advice

When it comes to SEO, Web Stories are just like any other page to Google. Everything from using alt text to properly using your keywords in your content will make a difference. As Google says, “If it helps rank your non-Story pages, it’ll probably help the Stories as well.”

Additional Technical Notes

According to Markee, who as we mentioned above has already worked extensively with bloggers on Web Stories in this early stage, there are some common technical caveats to be aware of as well:

• If publishers do not have Organization Schema filled out in Yoast, Web Stories will not validate.
• If you use the WordPress Media Library to upload videos for your Web Stories, be careful of consuming too many hosting resources. Video uses a lot of storage and bandwidth. These are NOT running through the Mediavine Video Player, but rather your web host, so proceed with caution.
• If websites are running WP Rocket, you’ll need version 3.7.5 or later. Otherwise you’ll need go under “Advanced” and “Caching” to exclude Web Stories from caching. Basically, publishers can paste the following in under “Never Cache URLs” – /web-stories/(.*)
• Make sure you’re running the most recent version of Web Stories to mitigate potential errors.

Tracking Web Stories in Google Analytics

The Web Story plugin provides a place to input your Google Analytics ID, and it can automatically insert the proper tracking code for you.

You do not need the Google Site Kit plugin, despite the language in the settings page, in order to do this.

My recommendation is to consider setting up a separate Google Analytics Profile to track Web Stories. Why? Because traffic to Web Stories is not really the same as traffic to your site.

As we’ve touched on multiple times above, think of stories as ads that run inside Google Discover for your content. The goal of Web Stories should be getting users to click over to your site, that’s it.

It’s not really your traffic until they leave the Web Story experience and arrive on your website, so don’t count it as such.

If you combine stories with your primary Analytics, you’ll see a surge of users who are virtually un-monetized; all that will do is hurt your RPM calculation, while also making everything harder to track.

Markee and Google recommend you set up a separate Dashboard inside your Google Analytics in order to track the performance of your stories.

Setting up a new dashboard to easily track your Web Stories’ performance, so you’ll know how to optimize them to convert more users into real traffic, but in left inside your regular unfiltered profile or view, will still impact RPM calculations. Here is our help guide on setting up a new Google Analytics Profile ID for your Web Stories.

Additionally, to prevent the Web Stories tracking URL parameter from breaking your dashboard page-level reporting, you should set your analytics profile to ignore the following parameter: _gl .

You can follow our help doc on how to exclude a URL parameter easily in Google Analytics. Reach out to publishers@mediavine.com if you have any questions on how to do this.

One More Caveat: Web Stories Appear in Search

We’ve talked a lot about looking at these as previews or ads, in a sense, for your content. Unfortunately, since Web Stories are their own “pages” on your site, they may show up when a user searches your site.

This applies both on your internal site search itself and on Google results pages.

For internal searches, you can control this; Users can find the “exclude option” for Web Stories if they go into their Web Stories plugin, go to their list of Web Stories, and click on “Quick Edit.”

Nevertheless, there’s always some chance that Web Stories will appear in Google Search Results, and that’s just a fact of life; removing them from Google Search would negate their ability to get you traffic.

Just do your best to make sure your main post ranks better through SEO than your stories, and don’t overthink this.

Mediavine Ads in Web Stories

As of this post, integrating Mediavine ads in Web Stories is still in its very early alpha/beta testing.

If you’re receiving significant traffic from Web Stories and want to help us test Mediavine ads within them, email publishers@mediavine.com. We hope to release these ad solutions more widely in early 2021.

However, even when we’re able to monetize stories at a wider scale, there are some important caveats:

• As with other AMP ads, Web Stories will run on Google’s domain and are largely outside of our control. We can’t provide the full Mediavine ad auction or use things such as first-party data, etc.
• These are specialized, full-screen ads. There is currently low demand for them, and that means a significantly lower fill rate than you’re used to.
• Google, not Mediavine or the publisher, controls the placement of these ads, and they only appear after seven slides, which means typically only one ad per Story.

All of the above bullet points can be summarized as such:

Your ability to monetize traffic will be many times stronger on your post. If and when you can run ads on these stories, we’re still only talking about a single, low-filling ad per story.

Not to sound like a broken record here, but you shouldn’t expect to make significant revenue from the Stories themselves right now. Instead, think of Web Stories as a cool way to access an entirely new audience for your site and its great content.

We’ll keep working to improve how Stories monetize, and continue to bring you updates on this exciting platform as they develop.

The post Google Web Stories SEO: What You Need to Know appeared first on Mediavine.

The results for this feature are so great, we couldn’t wait until Q1 to launch it: How does 3x the favorites sound?

What Is Create’s Recipe Card Save Button?

The Create save button is an additional way to favorite a page using Grow. The button will appear next to the print button within the Create recipe and how-to cards. (Right now, it doesn’t work within Lists.)

Once a reader uses this button they will find the post in their bookmarks section when they’re logged into Grow.

This save button has the most interaction we’ve seen so far with Grow bookmarks.

How Can I Customize It?

Currently, there are save button options for all five of Create’s card styles:

• Simple Square or Dark Simple Square
• Classy Circle or Dark Classy Circle
• Hero Image

If you’re already running Create and using one of our standard card styles, all you need to do is toggle the setting on in your Mediavine Dashboard!

What Happens When a Reader Clicks?

If the user is not logged in — and it’s their first anonymous bookmark for the site — when “save” is clicked, a tooltip will appear to encourage users to log in.

This tooltip appears above or below the save button depending on their scroll position, or it will appear attached to the widget on mobile.

Create Card Save Button by the Numbers

Are you ready for some math? You know that we couldn’t post a blog post about the new Grow save button within Create cards without telling you the results.

ICYMI: Mediavine publishers who have enabled Grow are already authenticating users and building the first-party data that will be oh-so-important when the third-party cookie crumbles in late 2021.

But how does this Create/Grow crossover save button help?

The favorites feature is currently the main way to encourage readers to sign up for Grow, so boosting your favorites is incredibly important in generating first-party data.

The good news? With this feature, the save recipe button does exactly this!

On our small sample size, we saw the save button increase favorites by 200%. Yes, two hundred percent. As in you will have THREE times the amount of favorites after enabling this.

Other Recipe Cards

The save button for Grow is currently only available for Create cards. We are preparing developer documentation for other recipe card plugins to integrate with the save button.

If you’re interested please let those developers know! We’d love to see the save recipe function for Grow in all recipe cards.

Enable Today

Alright, you’ve convinced me. How do I enable the save button in my Create card?

We’re so glad you asked! If you’re already running Grow and Create, you can enable it today in your Mediavine Dashboard.

Go ahead and log in, navigate to Settings > Grow (Beta) and scroll down to the bottom. Here you’ll see a toggle to enable the button.

Grow has recently added some other exciting features, most notably the new customization settings (found in your Dashboard!) and recommended content widgets.

The addition of the save button within the recipe card will increase authentications and continue to encourage users to sign up (so they can benefit from saving recipes into their bookmarks list) while also considering privacy and allowing users to consent to receive personalized advertisements.

We’re excited for this new save button and hope you’ll consider enabling it in your Dashboard today!

The more publishers who enable, the more feedback we can gather so that we can continue to build Grow together!

Please send your questions and feedback to grow.me@mediavine.com.

The post Introducing the Recipe Card Save Button: A Grow & Create Crossover appeared first on Mediavine.

Instead of giving up during these challenging times, they’ve doubled down. They worked on improving their content, staying visible and continued their focus on growing their traffic and more — all while sharing their expertise to help others learn and grow. 

The post Sugar Spun Run Traffic Case Study: Growing With Mediavine appeared first on Mediavine.

We’ve found that reaching this magic number is a key indicator of when you should put ads on your site, and as a result, it’s become a goal for many bloggers just starting out.

(more…)

The post Mediavine Publishers Grow Exponentially AFTER Joining. Here’s Why. appeared first on Mediavine.

A veritable onslaught of negative news, and so much uncertainty and trepidation regarding the path forward, invariably leads to panic.

But please don’t.

(more…)

The post Recession-Proof Your Blog: Don’t Give Up. Double Down. appeared first on Mediavine.

In the last few years, as the online advertising ecosystem has evolved, so has the way we calculate and allocate our revenue share. With over 5,800 live sites, we’ve reevaluated this once again.

Two years ago, we raised revenue shares significantly for our publishers, because as websites reach a certain number of impressions, many of our internal costs decrease on a relative basis.

Today, we’re adding another impression goal to accelerate the earning process right in time for the peak of Q4 advertising spend.

This new impression goal increases revenue shares to 82.5% for publishers producing 10 million ad impressions over 30 days, offering an additional incentive and extra revenue to fuel growth.

As a refresher, Mediavine’s revenue share is a base of 75% to you, the publisher, and 25% to Mediavine. Revenue shares may increase from 75% based on the following, with our new impression goal in bold:

• If your site produces 5 million ad impressions over the previous 30 days, your revenue share increases to 80%.
• If your site produces 10 million ad impressions over the previous 30 days, your revenue share increases to 82.5%.
• If your site produces 15 million ad impressions over the previous 30 days, your revenue share increases to 85%.

Nor has our loyalty bonus, which increases your revenue share on display and video ads by 1% per year with Mediavine, up to five years, for a maximum potential revenue share of 90%.*

You can always refer to our document on how Mediavine revenue shares are calculated, including the benefits of using ad impressions as the determining metric rather than unique visitors or even sessions.

The long and short of it is that we want your business to expand sustainably, and offer whatever guidance we can along the way. We never make a change like this without a strong rationale and plan of action.

That’s why, as part of this latest change, we’ll be reaching out to publishers just above or just shy of the 10 million impression threshold with actionable steps that will get you over that line and put more money in your pocket.

If you’re shy of the 10 million, or even of our first impression goal of 5 million, don’t fret. There’s still plenty of opportunities to optimize as well by taking the Mediavine Content Upgrade Challenge or working with our award-winning support team.

As a business, we’re only as strong as our publishers, and we are dedicated to finding new ways to improve our product and by extension, yours. Thank you as always for helping us with that mission.

*90% revenue share is possible when the loyalty bonus is combined with our impression based revenue share increases.

The post Mediavine Revenue Share Update appeared first on Mediavine.