Google Discover: Your Next SEO Opportunity

Given the vast amount of content generated daily, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. You may end up missing out on valuable information. But thanks to Google Discover, users can always get updated and relevant info even without searching for them.

For website owners, this presents a significant opportunity to attract substantial traffic. If you're interested in this opportunity, keep reading. Discover how this Google feature works and learn how to get traffic from Google Discover.

What Is Google Discover?

Google Discover offers users the opportunity to access personalized content they may not even realize they need.It is found on the Google app and provides you with a curated list of content that is relevant and engaging. Android users can also access it by swiping right on their home screen.

The Revolutionary Nature of Google Discover

Using advanced algorithms to create personalized feeds, Google Discover takes a proactive approach to content delivery. It anticipates what a user needs, allowing them to explore both local and international content sources that they may not have found otherwise.

So, if you've been looking up mortgage loans a lot, this feature can help you discover financial services you were not aware of.

For people who own or manage a website, it means that organic search isn't the only way that you can generate traffic through a search engine. With Discover, you can engage with an audience already interested in what you have to offer.

Google Discover and Google Feed: How Are These Two Different?

Google Feed came a few years before Google Discover. They also differ in very crucial ways:

• Type of content featured. Google news, weather, and other text-based content tend to be the focus of Google Feed. Meanwhile, Google Discoverprioritizes rich media.
• Level of user control. A user can customise their preferences in Google Discover. This capability is not available with its predecessor.
• Purpose. Google Discoverprovides a more comprehensive browsing experience that goes beyond Google Feed's news updates.

As you can see Google Discover is the next step of evolution, building on what its earlier version provided.

Understanding How Google Discover Functions

The inner workings of Google Discoverare highly technical, but basically, this is what happens:

• Data gathering. Some are automatically collected like device information, but user-initiated changes are included here as well.
• Personalisation algorithm. The algorithm processes the information to identify patterns and understand what's interesting to you.
• Content selection. The Google Discover algorithm selects the most relevant content for you.
• User interaction. Based on how you interact with the feed, it learns more about you and what you want.

This means that it only becomes better over time. Discover is always updated to best reflect your interests, preferences, and online activities.

Brief History of Google Discover

The journey to bringing Google Discover to the public was more than 10 years in the making. Each step of the evolution adds more value for the users than the last:

• Google Now. In 2012, Google introduced information cards to users based on their search history and preferences. Since then, Google Now has been integrated with the Google Search app.
• Google Feed. In 2017, Google users started getting something more useful than just snippets of info. Through this update, you were able to get personalized recommendations of articles, news, and videos instead of just snippets of information.
• Google Discover. With this 2018 update, the basic principle of the feature is still the same. But here, there's a greater focus on visual content.
• Continuous upgrades. Since then, various upgrades have been introduced like using AI to deliver even more relevant content.

How Does Google Discover Determine Preferences?

Google Discover uses both data sources and algorithms to create a fully personalized experience for you. This includes:

• Search history
• User activity
• Usage of Google apps services
• Engagement and feedback from using the feature
• Device information (location, phone model, etc.)
• Settings that let you manage your interests
• Advanced algorithms.

By leveraging all of these, Google Discover is able to deliver content recommendations completely aligned with your interests.

Why Google Discover Matters for SEO

Google Discovery ads are great for getting site traffic across Google services. But with Discover, you may not have to rely as much on paid ads.

With this revolutionary feature, you'll be able to:

• Add another traffic source. More site visitors mean increased authority, which helps with your organic rankings.
• Reach a new audience. You discover a new audience, giving you the go signal to expand your SEO strategy to include them.
• Improve engagement rates. Better engagement usually means lower bounce rates.

If you've landed on the Google Discover feed, you're probably doing well in SEO. But with the boost that it's able to provide, you may be able to achieve even higher rankings.

How to Appear in Google Discover: Strategies for Getting Your Content Featured

There's a lot of competition for a spot in the Google Discover feed as it will only feature the best of the best. So, while implementing all these strategies doesn't guarantee anything, it's your best shot! As you'll notice these are things that you need to do as part of your SEO strategy. Therefore, working on getting your feature is the same as improving your site search rankings. Here are a few things that you can do:

Craft High-Quality Content

If you want your content to end up on Google Discover, curate something that people will actually want to read or know about. This includes making sure that it is:

• Easy to scan
• Relevant to your audience
• Accurate and well-sourced
• Comprehensive
• Original
• Engaging.

Essentially, think about what would make them stay on the page instead of going to discover Google recommendations elsewhere. If you're not sure whether you're headed on the right track, refer to your strongest competition. Then, do even better than they have.

Enhance Your E-E-A-T Level

EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is part of the Search Quality Rater Guidelines which indirectly helps Google with developing future algorithm updates. Since Google Discover uses algorithms, EEAT is important for this as well. Here's something to help you get a better sense of how high your EEAT rating is:

• Experience. This is important because a unique perspective adds a lot of value to the content. To demonstrate experience, use first-hand knowledge and provide visual proof where relevant.
• Expertise. What makes the author qualified to say all these things? That's what expertise answers. To prove yourself a true expert, publish relevant credentials and include insights that only experts would know.
• Authoritativeness. If your website is seen as a good source of industry info, it probably has a high level of authoritativeness. To build on this component, you can create backlinks in trustworthy sites and expand your presence beyond your website.
• Trustworthiness. Everything you do for the first three helps here. However, trustworthiness also covers security matters and promotes transparency.

Even if you believe you're already doing all the work here, explore what else you can do to attain a higher EEAT level. We've created a comprehensive article on this subject to provide more guidance.

Crafting Compelling Headlines

News flash: Whether they see it from your Google search or elsewhere, most people who will encounter your text will not read past the headline. That's why you have to do everything to get their attention and keep it. Here's how you can do it:

• Create different versions for different segments of the audience
• Be clear and concise
• Use numbers
• Ask questions
• Demonstrate the value that will be extracted from the content.

Most importantly, test and optimise. What you think will work and what will appeal to the readers may turn out to be two entirely different things.

Implementing Structured Data to Support Entities

Implementing structured data is important because it shows search engines exactly what the content is about. If you're publishing news articles, doing this will help the algorithms understand that it's news content.

If you haven't done this kind of task before, there are tools that already do it for you. There's merit in doing it manually, but we recommend leaving this up to an SEO expert to avoid any issues.

Emphasising Visual Content

Visual content does more than just capture the attention of the reader. It also helps create breaks in your text to make it easier to consume. This is probably the reason there's a huge emphasis on Google Discover for visual content. You can incorporate it in the form of:

• Screenshots
• Videos
• High-quality images
• GIFs
• Infographics
• Charts and graphs.

What kind you should use depends on what you're talking about. For example, screenshots are great for showing step-by-step instructions from using a website. Meanwhile, charts and graphs can help readers better make sense of numbers.

Enhance Website for Google Discover

The Discover Google feature appears only on mobile devices. So, make sure that your device is completely mobile-optimised. See the list below:

• Employ a responsive design so the layout would adjust based on the screen size.
• Make navigation simple so that content discovery and exploration will be easier.
• Improve the site loading speed.
• Create and space icons so that they're easy to tap.

You should be able to maintain the same smooth browsing experience that visitors get when they're accessing your website from a desktop computer.

Experimenting with Google Web Stories

Through Google Discover, web stories are part of the Google app. A visual medium is used here to deliver stories. These are easy to create and divide the content into bite-sized info. It works in the same way as in social media platforms.

However, the difference is that a web story is searchable. So, you should still adhere to SEO best practices like using keywords and metadata.

Monitoring Discover Performance via Google Search Console

If you have an SEO strategy, you're probably already familiar with the Google Search Console. Using this, you'll be able to see traffic activity for both organic search and Discover. You can even look at the numbers for a specific post and/or for an extended period.

If it's going to be your first time using the Search Console, here are the basics that you should know about:

• Performance report. This is where you'd see various stats.
• Discover tab. To see the stats on just Google Discover, just click this tab on the performance report.
• Metrics. The metrics represent various information related to Discover, like impressions, click-through rates, top pages, and more.

From the information you have gathered, improve your strategy because pages at the top today may not stay there forever. For example, with Google Discover news featured, they'll most likely always be fresher releases because they're the most up-to-date.

What’s Next? Work on Getting a Discover Feature

Appearing on Discover feeds can help drive a lot of traffic to the site and build your reputation. This will also give you a chance to stand out and rapidly build your authority within the industry. So, be prepared to do more work to achieve this. To start, implement the strategies we recommended. Then, track and report your progress to recalibrate your efforts based on hard data. Good luck!