How to Use Web Stories to Boost Your Practice

by Naren Arulrajah, Ekwa Marketing

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You may already be familiar with web stories; they are a more recent phenomenon making significant strides as a successful marketing tool and are now growing in popularity. Since they provide information in small, easy-to-digest doses, they can be effectively used by dental offices to market their services to new and existing patients in the same way social media has been doing over the last few years.

Web stories are similar in features and format to the stories available on social media sites such as Instagram and Facebook. Since clients love reading stories on such platforms, they are bound to enjoy reading web stories in similar formats. This would bring more visitors to your website while also increasing the time they spend viewing it. This could signal to Google that your website is more popular among clients and worth visiting than those of competitors. Read on to see how web stories can benefit your dental practice.

What are Google Web Stories?

Google Web Stories are visually rich, interactive, full-screen format content especially designed for a mobile device that can be used to educate people about a product, service, or basically anything. They are hosted on a website through which they can also be promoted. They may include text, images, audio, video, and animation. The text should be short and concise, less than 280 characters, or 40 to 70 words per page. Titles should be less than 90 characters.

First-person narratives, live and updating stories, educational content, polls, and quizzes are some popular content projected as web stories. Promotions, discounts, and special announcements; video teasers; tips and advice; frequently asked questions; social proof and testimonials; and myths and facts are a few areas that can be covered under web stories.

They appear in standard Google Search results and Google Discover. You can feature them as separate content items within your website or embed them similarly to podcast episodes or short videos. Quizzes and polls are interactive elements where your responses are welcomed. If your content is exciting and engaging and the web story feature is optimized, it can help expand the reach of your website while also increasing user interaction and engagement.

A web story could have one or more pages; multiple pages are known as “a set of story pages” and need a cover page. When scrolling through a web story, you can pause the story, navigate between pages, or go to a new story with just a swipe or tap on the screen.

Web stories can appear in Google mobile search results and attract more visitors to your website, as the search results would stand out from the rest as they appear with images. Although you can browse a web story on a desktop computer, a mobile device is the best way to view one, as a web story’s height and width specifications suit them better.

Benefits of web stories to a dental practice

  • Increase the website’s reach to a broader audience as they can be discovered in Google Search and Google Discover.
  • Help boost the rankings of your website.
  • Help get more click-throughs from search engine result pages as the content is more visual.
  • It can boost website engagement-related metrics, indicating to Google that the website is more relevant.

Steps to creating a web story

  1. Draft your web story narrative.
  2. Choose appropriate editing software.
  3. Create your web story.
  4. Test your web story before you publish it.

Standard SEO best practices are also applicable to web stories. If you already apply an SEO strategy for your practice, use it when creating your web stories. You should also be aware of SEO elements specific to web stories. An uncluttered, clean design is a must if your web stories are to make their intended mark.

When publishing your web stories, you should pay attention to the following:

  • Adhering to the relevant technical standards and best practices
  • Posting at least two or three web stories every month
  • Ensuring that a good mix of stories is published

Some of these best practices are:

  • Focus on videos, but pay attention to images, audio, and animations.
  • Use elements that are engaging and interactive to users.
  • Use your brand identity to introduce your services to potential patients.
  • Ensure your content is web-compatible with proper tools and formats.
  • Provide easy access to your web stories.
  • Pay attention to Google’s SEO standards.

Google web stories are a more recent phenomenon that dental offices can use for marketing their services to new and existing patients, in the same way social media has been doing for years. They are similar in features and format to the stories on sites like Instagram and Facebook. They are interactive, visually rich, full-screen format content especially designed for a mobile device. You can get the best results for your web stories by following the applicable best practices when creating and publishing them.


About the Author

Naren Arulrajah, President and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, has been a leader in medical marketing for over a decade. Ekwa provides comprehensive marketing solutions for busy dentists, with a team of more than 180 full time professionals, providing web design, hosting, content creation, social media, reputation management, SEO, and more. If you’re looking for ways to boost your marketing results, call 855-598-3320 for a free strategy session with Naren. You may also schedule a session at your convenience with the Senior Director of Marketing – Lila, by clicking https://www.ekwa.com/msm/ or simply send a text to 313-777-8494.

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