WASHINGTON. Google Discover is a newly-released Google feature that aims to enhance the search experience for users around the globe. Discover shows different contents based on the users’ interactions with Google products or contents that they choose to follow directly. Discover also features sports scores, videos, stock prices, entertainment updates, and more. To attract the attention of Discover, however, you may need to modify your SEO approach.
Additionally, this new feature of Google is user-centric and provides better access to relevant topics even if users are not searching for it. With the continuous rise of Google Discover that has more than 800 million users, you can now create a new strategy to enhance your search engine optimization.
So if you want to take another step on how to improve your SEO, take cue from these five effective ways on how to optimize your content for Google Discover.
Upping the SEO game: Produce high quality, engaging content
High quality content is key to improving your digital presence. You should take care to create high quality content with useful information that focuses on the needs of your site’s regular visitors. Accurate, reliable content goes a long way toward gaining a presence in Google Discover feeds.
For that reason, optimizing your content for Google Discover is a great ways to help your quality content stand out from the crowd. Which will help your sight gain higher quality traffic for your website.
In addition to creating quality content, it’s also crucial to focus on encouraging reader engagement with your content. Google Discover doesn’t choose content based on your friends’ shares and likes. Instead, it relies on what you have shared, liked, or interacted with the most in the past.
That means you also need to focus on building good relationships with your users. In order to accomplish this, you need to encourage new and existing clients to stay engaged with your brand through loyalty perks, email marketing personalization, social media shout-outs and similar incentives.
Create a mix of interesting content
Google Discover narrows its focus to unearthing on contents it determines is both fresher and more newsworthy. Creating a mix of related, interesting and original content is another way to increase your rank to the point where your content gets featured in users’ Discovery feeds. To gain the attention of Google Discover, instead of focusing on keywords you should plan your editorial calendar around a collage of informative articles, breaking news, research articles, and anything else that would add value to users who visit your site. SEO tactics are changing.
Use high-quality images and embedded videos whenever possible
Images play a significant role in achieving rank in Google Discover. In Discover, featured images relating to your content are as essential as headlines and the content itself. A captivating image gains a substantial number of clicks that can become a significant factor in Google Discover ranking.
One key way to accomplish this is to follow Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) image requirements to drive more clicks. To improve your imaging score, you should follow these guidelines:
- Images should be at least 1200 pixels wide.
- Image URLs must be indexable and crawlable.
- Images must be in .jpg, .gif, or .png format.
- Images must represent the marked-up content.
- You should provide multiple high-resolution images (minimum of 800,000 pixels when multiplying height and width) with the ff. Aspects ratios: 16×9, 4×3, and 1×1 for best results.
Furthermore, the emphasis of web content has steadily shifted to videos in recent years. As such, you should try to embed video content in your site’s overall content to drive increased readership and ensure audiences’ engagement and retention. It also enhances your SEO efforts.
Make your website mobile-friendly
Google Discover feeds are optimized for viewing on mobile devices, particularly cell phones. So it’s essential that your website and content are mobile-friendly. If you want to know whether your site is optimized for mobile or not, you can simply open Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test website and plug in your URL to get a full report.
Avoid Over-Optimizing
To gain ranking in Google Discover, you don’t have to use special tags or structured data. Just emphasize superior, user friendly content and attractive graphics and video content on your site. You’ll be good to go.
But keep this in mind: Don’t over-do it. With Discover, you should avoid crossing the line on site optimization. For example, instead of putting too much effort on your inserts, you focus more on how to enhance your content and make it more appealing and helpful.
Takeaway
As Google places more emphasis on Google Discover, you need to start evolving your thinking and understanding that you need to look at SEO and site optimization a little differently than before. Focus more on creating relevant and engaging content rather than stuffing your content with high search volume keywords.
Bottom line: Following the five guidelines we’ve listed here will help you optimize your content to gain the attention of Google Discover’s feed.
— Headline image: Google Discover splash page displayed on cellphone. (Via Google Discover intro page.)
