Questions Regarding SEO, Text and Code

Hi @gregsgraphics,

Thanks for getting in touch and sharing these questions.

First, I wanted to share a few resources about SEO and Web Stories, which I think will give you a better overall understanding of what’s important for Web Stories in terms of SEO:

• Best practices for Web Stories SEO from Google Search Console documentation
• SEO for Web Stories from the AMP blog
• Story metadata from AMP documentation

Now, to your direct questions:

1. Should your SEO keywords be contained in the Description, and in the text on the story pages?

Adding and managing keywords is best done through an SEO plugin. You can access metaboxes for such plugins within the Web Story editor by clicking on the Third-Party Meta Boxes icon at the bottom of the editor screen: https://jmp.sh/jGV1ojJ+/Screen+Shot+2021-07-19+at+12.29.27+PM.png.

2. If a Web Story is NOT added to a post or page, how do you add Schema and/or Keyword information?

See above – you would do this via an SEO plugin.

3. If you use the Title 1, Title 2 or Title 3 text buttons, do those translate to <H1>, <H2> and <H3> tags, respectively? When we look at the source code of the Web Story, we DO NOT see <H1>, <H2> or <H3> tags.

At this time, no, these are all using p tags. However, we do have an open GitHub issue to discuss this issue.

4. If #3 is “yes”, do those tags remain as you style the text (size, color, etc.)?

See #3.

5. Just like in a WordPress post or page, you can view the “text” or “code” version of your content. Where can you do that in Web Stories (other than its source code in a browser)?

At this time, there is no way to edit the source code of a story using the Web Stories plugin. Do you have a specific use case in mind here?

6. Where can you view and/or edit the CSS of the Web Story to further customize the text?

The plugin does not support custom CSS as it could cause AMP validation errors.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

Thanks Bethany for getting back to us so quickly. We’re still learning the UI of the plugin, and the “M” was the only button we hadn’t clicked on yet.

We understand that you do not provide support for third-party plugins. We are using Yoast as our SEO plugin.

Couple more questions:

1. How does the “Story Description” in your plugin relate to a “meta description” as set in your SEO plugin? Or the “title” relating to the “SEO title”?

2. Under the Text tool/tab on the left editing panel, there’s a “button” called “Caption”. The word “caption” in this case is referring to a text “style”, and not to captions you would add to your videos, correct?

Thanks again.

1. How does the “Story Description” in your plugin relate to a “meta description” as set in your SEO plugin? Or the “title” relating to the “SEO title”?

Good question. The title tag is auto-generated based on your story’s title as defined in the Editor and your theme’s pattern for titles. For example, on my site it’s “[story title] – [site title].”

The Description field in the Editor populates the meta description field. However, if you enter a description via a third-party SEO plugin like Yoast using the third-party meta boxes, the Yoast version will override what you’ve placed in the Description field in the editor.

2. Under the Text tool/tab on the left editing panel, there’s a “button” called “Caption”. The word “caption” in this case is referring to a text “style”, and not to captions you would add to your videos, correct?

Yes, that’s correct. To add captions to videos, you would insert the video, select it in the Editor, and then upload captions and subtitles as a VTT file in the right side of the Editor: https://jmp.sh/OE2ywU3+/captions.png.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

@gregsgraphics As we haven’t received a response, I’ll mark this as resolved. Feel free to open a new support topic if you continue to encounter issues, or reopen this topic and we’d be happy to assist. Thank you!