Google Discover: How to Optimize Content for Discover Feed in 2024
December 22, 2023
Neha Bawa
What has been updated from the old blog post:
- Introduction updated.
- Points were added in the content optimization section.
- Language modified.
Summary: Want your content to be seen on Google Discover? Wait no more. This blog reveals strategies to enhance visibility on the Discover feed, helping you unlock the potential of this personalized content discovery platform.
Google Discover introduces a unique approach to exploration. Unlike traditional searches, it isn’t driven by specific queries; instead, it’s a discovery platform presenting tailored content aligned with your preferences and interests.
Drawing from your search history and interaction within the Discover app, it recommends fresh content. As it learns your preferences, it refines its suggestions, aiming to deliver more relevant content with each subsequent use. By featuring in Google Discover, websites reach a wider audience organically. But how to feature your content on Discover?
For brands, it is a promising opportunity. So, why exactly is Google Discover important and how can one optimize content for it? We will try to answer these questions and more in our blog below.
What is Google Discover?
Google Discover is an updated and rebranded version of Google Feed – Google’s Android device app. While the previous version of Google Feed was more text-centric, Google Discover accommodates different types of content to enhance user interaction.
This includes:
- News
- Photos & images
- Video Content
- Latest blog posts
- Evergreen content
The idea is to present the data in a more interesting way to the users by transitioning from ‘text’ to an improved visual discovery.
Google Discover focuses on users’ experience to provide relevant online content. It is being branded as ‘search without searching’ because users don’t need to search for the content that gets shown to them on the platform. Instead, the platform recommends content to users.
This feature has made Google Discover an interesting point of conversation and debate amongst marketers.
This has led to the need for marketers and entrepreneurs to answer certain questions like:
- How do I optimize my content for Google Discover?
- How do I ensure that my content gets featured on Google Discover?
- Is it worth spending time and resources on understanding Google Discover?
- How do I identify the profiles of users interested in my products and services?
Before we find answers to all these questions, we need to get into the depth of understanding of how Google Discover works. Let’s take a look.
How does Google Discover work?
As users swipe through the online content, Google Discover keeps on ‘discovering’ things about them and keeps providing them with fresh content. All a user needs to do is to continue swiping.
- Keeps on learning about search patterns and provides the most suitable content at the right time. A user does not need to type or give instructions for it to do so; it is an automatic process.
- Tracks online, web, and application activities. It also keeps track of location, including its history and settings. Based on these, it suggests suitable content.
Now, let’s get into the details concerning the features of Google Discover.
Source: adspring.fr
Features of Google Discover
Through Google Discover, the users can:
- Follow and unfollow the topics of their choice
- Get information in a query-less way
- Control the frequency of specific kinds of content
- Manage their interests by manually selecting the topics of their choice
So far, we have explained how promising Google discover as a marketing tool is. The task here would be to get noticed by search engines and get featured here organically. In the next section, we’ll tell you how to make your content visible on Google Discover.
How to Optimize for Google Discover in 2024?
People familiar with the concept of regular SEO will not find it difficult to understand how to appear in Google Discover as the basic principles remain the same.
Here are a few points to follow to consider while optimizing your content:
Quality and Engaging Content
The main focus should be on quality content. Businesses should make sure to include the answers to the questions readers might be interested in. It will be an added advantage if the content has an edge over the competitors. If the content is about a specific topic with less competition, it is comparatively easier to get in.
Additional Read: Learn how to create effective Content Strategy
However, if the topic is generic with a lot of online content already available, then one needs to be more careful about the quality of the content.
What else does quality content constitute? For starters, you should look at creating blogs that are result-driven as well as well-structured with a logical flow of information. Additionally, the content must also comply with Google News Guidelines and Google Webmaster Guidelines. That means that your content must be original, purpose-driven, and up-to-date, and it also answers user queries.
Besides following these points, a business should go a step ahead and study the content posted by its competitors- ‘What are they posting?’, ‘What are their rankings?’, etc. All these factors need to be considered to come up with compelling content. Additionally, the website also needs to be verified and indexed while complying with Google News content policy.
Time Quotient
To increase the chances of content doing well in Google Discover, one should make sure to post timely content. A business needs to have an always-on repository of evergreen content that never goes out of trend. To complement that, the business must also keep an eye on trending topics that are time-sensitive, specifically those that are within the niche, and include those in the content.
E-E-A-T
Focus on E-E-A-T – experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of the content. The higher the content is on the E-E-A-T factor, the better its credibility. For a few industries, like the medical and financial industries, the writer must have technical and professional expertise. In such cases, it is important to focus on the truthfulness and credibility of the content and the writer.
Schema Implementation
The schema implementation should be as per SEO requirements. There is no special schema structured data (code making it easier for search engines to crawl, manage, and display the content) for Google Discover. Describe the content well so that the search engines can have a clear understanding of what the content is all about.
Engaging Images & Videos
Since Google Discover is a virtual tool, content needs to be visually appealing. Combining content with good images is essential to hold the reader’s interest; it helps increase the chances of a user clicking to read more. Similarly, utilizing professional and engaging videos is highly recommended as well.
Website Optimized for Google Accelerated Mobile Pages
To increase the chances of getting your content listed on Google Discover, make sure that your website is optimized for AMP. That means your web pages load swiftly, thus creating a seamless and instantly gratifying UX which is the very essence of the Google Discover feed experience. Speed will also swing your website’s SERP rankings in your favour, thus making it more likely to appear on Discover.
Web Stories
Since Google Discover is mobile-centric, use the Web Stories tool to reach out to users by providing them with relevant content at any particular point in time. Since Discover is also a visual medium, use Web Stories for compelling visual storytelling.
Best SEO Practices
To get listed on Google Discover, following basic SEO rules is a must. This ensures an improved user experience and a better SEO strategy. This move will improve user engagement, leading them to spend more time on a page.
Ask Users to Follow You
Even though Google Discover allows users to follow the topics of their interest, users can skip doing the same until and unless it is brought to their attention. So, a business should ask interested users to add its content to their page and follow them on Google Discover.
Once they do that, Google will keep on alerting them every time some content is posted on the site. This step also helps in enhancing the engagement factor for the website. It also helps to augment the search rankings.
Social Media Feed Engagement
To optimize its content for Discover Feed, a business should make efforts to increase its social feed engagement. The probability of getting a higher rank on the users’ feed is directly proportional to the number of likes, shares, and comments on the posts.
The best way to improve social media feed engagement is by;
- Creating and posting relevant content regularly
- Sharing posts across various social media channels
- Asking the users to like and share the content
Additional Read: Must-Try Social Media Marketing Strategies
Any content that is doing well on social media platforms has a high chance of being picked on Google Discover Feed.
Multiple Languages
Since Google Discover is available in several languages, take advantage of it by publishing content in the language of the target users.
Why is Google Discover Important to SEO and Content Strategy?
Google Discover is an important component of Google Search and hence holds a lot of importance for SEO.
- It has already been explained how Google Discover helps users stay updated on the topics that are relevant to them. So, businesses can use Google Discover to reach out to their target audience as it allows the users to explore new data in the form of blogs, videos, and other content types.
- Google Discover is not restricted to only the latest news pieces, articles, and content. It simply shows audiences relatable posts irrespective of when they were published – making them an important aspect of your SEO strategy.
- Through Google Discover, businesses can analyze the overall traffic over a long period and gain insights about their content performance through the reporting feature in the Search Console. This helps businesses to optimize their content in the best possible manner, rank better in search engines, and enhance their chances of appearing in Google Discover.
All these factors make Google Discover an imminent part of any business’s content strategy.
The above-discussed points prove that Google Discover can be a great tool for a business or an individual to optimize their content; if they can understand its complete scope and usage. Explore the endless possibilities that this medium offers irrespective of whether you are a business owner, a marketer, or even a blogger.
The more the users interact with Google Discover, the more it will show related content. So, your focus should be on getting users to interact with your content.
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