Google Discover is a tool that offers content based on personalized recommendations and is available on mobile devices.
Traditional search mechanisms need user input. Discover, however, gives a user a specified feed of articles, blog posts, videos, and more, customized to the individual preferences and interests of each user. This customization is led by a user’s Web and App Activity, offering a highly personalized browsing experience.
Understanding Google Discover
Google Discover works as a mobile news feed that keeps users engaged by delivering relevant to the latest users’ interests and search content.
Google Discover adapts to users’ changing interests, ensuring that the feed remains fresh, informative, and provides content that users find compelling even before they ask for it.
For publishers, Google Discover gives a unique opportunity to reach wider audiences, broadening articles, blogs, and videos, fusing your content organically into a series of easy-to-read images and headlines.
It pushes readers’ engagement without a direct intent from them and in today’s overfed digital info space, making your content pop up before the user is a priceless possibility to increase your website traffic.
Discover how to be discovered by Google Discover
To ensure your content not only appears but truly stands out on Google Discover, there are several critical criteria that need to be satisfied. This includes producing high-quality, engaging content that resonates with your target audience, optimizing for mobile, compelling visuals to capture user interest, and adhering to Google’s content policies.
Let’s take a more detailed look at those requirements:
1. The Art of Technical SEO
Creating content that isn’t just visible but also conforms to Google Discover’s guidelines is the bedrock of a successful strategy. Begin by focusing on technical SEO: eye-catching titles, coherent meta descriptions, SEO titles, and all alt-description in place. Check pages with your content are indexing well on Google, and are discoverable, with proper tags. The great place to start is Google Search Console, where all the statistics you need to track your website’s success, ranking position, and quality of SEO, are in plain view. Take a look at our article on the topic. Next step, you have to be a compelling storyteller!
2. Crafting Content that Connects
The ‘secret ingredient’ to success in the Google Discover ecosystem is to consistently deliver both informative and captivating content. This could mean leveraging video and visual elements, adopting an authoritative voice on subject matters, and ensuring the content is actionable and comprehensive. It’s about creating content that grabs the attention of users as they navigate through their personalized feeds. Connect with your readers by providing additional value with your blog, article, or press release, which not just informs, but educates and narrates a story.
3. Visuals and Titles that Captivate
Your discovery on Google Discover won’t get far without the right visuals. An image forms an essential element of your story!
Include high-quality images in your content, especially large images that need to be at least 1200 px wide and enabled by the max-image-preview: large setting. And most certainly do not introduce your site logo.
Google must also have permission to display these images. So use AMP or a permissions form to get it right. And remember, your titles are the first impressions. Make them riveting, but also honest. No room for clickbait here, just pure and genuine engagement!
5. Mobile Optimization is a Must
As Google Discover is a mobile-first solution mobile optimization comes as a natural must-have for your website so it can be featured on Google Discover. Also, as Google’s algorithms continue to evolve with a mobile-first index, the mobile compatibility of your website directly influences its Discover visibility. A mobile-optimized site is not just a component of a robust online strategy—it’s a critical element that can significantly boost your content’s chances of being featured in users’ Discover feeds.
6. Topical or Timeless: Creating Content that Endures
The ecosystem of Google Discover requires a strategic approach to content creation. The platform spotlights not only the freshest news articles but also content that has taken the test of time. To consistently capture the attention of users and maintain the staying power of your content within Discover, it’s essential to strike a delicate balance between immediacy and permanence in your content strategy.
If you are aiming to maximize your presence on Google Discover, the key lies in crafting a content portfolio that blends the urgency of current topics with timeless content. Maintaining this balance is critical to growing visibility on Google Discover, keeping your content in circulation, and engaging users week after week.
7. Schema.org markup for visibility on Google Discover
An effective way to increase your website’s visibility and interaction on Google Discover is Structured Data. Using Schema markup is one of the best approaches for implementing Structured Data for Discover. It allows you to provide comprehensive information about your organization, including the name, logo, description, contact information, and much more.
Take, for example, a music website. By employing the genre schema markup, you’re able to enrich your content with structured details like the song title, the band name, release time, and user ratings. This data can appear as a rich snippet and push users’ engagement, giving all necessary info at one glance.
Other useful tricks:
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Stay on top of the trends in your industry. The more trending content you provide the more often Google Discover will “discover” your website.
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Incorporate Dates and Data: Including the month and year in your titles can lend your content a sense of immediacy.
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Competitor Analysis: Keeping an eye on competitors can provide inspiration and insights into content strategies that resonate with your audience.
Final Thoughts on Google Discover
Although Google Discover might have some downsides, like the fragile balance between creating content that represents your brand and tailoring it to meet the short-term interests of your audience, appearance on Google Discover bears sweet fruits driving traffic to your website. And to measure, control, and analyze your results Google Search Console comes in quite handy. It allows you to look for patterns in the content that perform well on Discover, and analyze the topics, format, and style of this content to guide your future content strategy. Here you can find more info on the advantages of Google Search Console.
