How to Get Featured on Google Discover
How to Get Featured on Google Discover: Are you a business owner or marketer? Does Google Discover have a place in your marketing toolbox? Google Discover is still unknown to some marketers. But others are using it to grow their businesses. Discover is an excellent source of web traffic. As a result, it will help build credibility for your brand.
Users can quickly search for and find interesting topics with this tool. However, the best part of this tool is that it allows you to find what you are looking for without having to search. As a part of Google’s search engine, this tool uses your search history to show you the content you are interested in.
As a result, content marketers use this Google app to increase traffic to their websites. This renamed feed generates more traffic because Google developers have optimized this app and customized it for mobile devices.
However, note that Google Discover, as a brand, has been renamed but is distinct from Google News. The two are different.
How is Google News different from Google Discover?
Google News provides users with trending stories and relevant content from around the world. It offers new news based on topics that users have previously searched for.
However, Google Discover provides consumer-interested information that engages users without requiring them to search. You can also customize your content while using Discover. This can be done quickly by following topics.
How to Get Featured on Google Discover
What is keyword difficulty, and how is it measured?
However, for your marketing content to appear in Discover, you need high-quality content and an index of your web pages on Google.
What is Google Discover?
Google Discover is an updated version of Google Feed that displays web content based on a user’s search history. It recommends information before they search. In other words, you’ll find interesting topics even without entering a keyword.
Google made three significant changes to the new Discover to do so. These changes include:
1. Shifting focus from answers to journeys
2. Shifting focus from queries to query-free information discovery
3. Shifting focus from text to a more visual approach to data exploration
Additionally, the old Feed design was primarily text-based. But the new Discover has a broader range of content, including:
- News
- Video content
- Photos/images
- Recently published blog posts
- Featured content
- Evergreen content
- And so on.
So, the Discover feed lets you find new and interesting topics and content. Here’s what the latest Google Discover looks like:
Google developers have customized this feed for mobile devices. Essentially, you can customize your feed to show only the content you’re interested in. To do this, tap the header of any content that interests you.
This will give you exciting and relevant content. Plus, once you follow the content you’re interested in, you’ll only see content that’s related to it. But you can stop following topics by tapping the “More” button in the bottom right corner of your mobile screen.
When you tap the “More” button, scroll down a bit and tap “Your data in Search” to see your search history. From there, scroll down to delete the items that no longer interest you.
So, since Discover can drive a lot of web traffic to your website, it should be an element of your digital marketing strategy.
Why is Google Discover important?
Discover is important for your online business for several reasons. Here are a few of them.
Did you know that Google Discover is a search engine platform and a space for organizing engaging content found across the web? This space is called “Collections.” You can add engaging web pages, including products and other essential pieces of content, to this space.
You can also invite others to contribute to your Collections. Interestingly, the Google app acts as an analytics tool to measure the traffic coming from the Discover platform.
Google calls this reporting tool Discover. With this tool, you can view and measure the web traffic coming from Google Discover. So, with the help of this data, you define the content that performs best (i.e., the content that gets the most traffic, and you know the content that doesn’t perform).
How to Get Featured on Google Discover
As a result, you update your current content and consider content to improve SEO and increase traffic. Google has also added a new Discover report feature to Google Search Console to provide users with helpful information and answer some of their urgent questions.
Some of the new data in the Discover report is as follows:
- The volume of site traffic from Discover.
- Your best content in Google Discover.
- How often does your site appear in Discover?
- How does your content perform in Discover compared to traditional search results?
With the help of this information, you can improve your content strategy and Google rankings. Since all search engines value engaging content, optimizing content for Google Discover is crucial, as this tool identifies trends in the popularity of engaging content. Thus, it provides users with personalized and engaging content.
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8 Secret Ways to Optimize for Google Discover
Here are eight secret elements to help you optimize your content for Google Discover.
1. Boost the Quality of Your Content
Content is the essence of digital marketing, so without content, your marketing efforts will be in vain. But that doesn’t mean publishing just any content. For example, thin or low-quality content is less important and will have no value to your readers.
So, if you continue to publish this type of content, you will have a hard time appearing in Discover and gradually lose your readers. If your articles are struggling to answer readers’ questions and your competitors are also providing better content than you, then your competitors will gain reader loyalty.
Similarly, Google Discover also provides users with relevant and engaging content. It doesn’t matter if this content is presented in the form of articles, blog posts, videos, and more. You need to produce highly informative posts because Discover is designed to provide users with quality content.
To do this, when creating content for publication or when updating old blog posts, use trending data, current statistics, and marketing strategies to enhance your articles. Also, use longtail keywords, semantic keywords, high-quality images, and descriptive graphics to optimize your post.
Also, understand the user’s search intent. Please create a list of relevant keywords and incorporate them into your content to enhance its relevance.
Ensure that all necessary elements are present in the content to keep the audience engaged on the page. For example, ask conceptual questions from the very beginning to grab the reader’s attention. A conceptual question does not require an answer. Instead, it is a tactic to influence the reader to consider your message. Content marketers also use this writing style to emphasize important points.
Using this approach will help you:
- Increase the time a blog reader spends on your page
- Reduce your bounce rate
- Increase your site traffic
- Improve your user dwell time
- Increase your search engine rankings
- Increase your chances of appearing in Google Discover
Content Marketing Challenges
A Semrush survey of 1,200 marketers in 39 countries found some interesting results. Content marketing statistics for 2020 indicate that marketers are struggling to produce engaging content.
How to Get Featured on Google Discover
According to the results of this survey, producing quality content is one of the biggest challenges for any business.
- According to this survey, 54% of marketers are unable to produce content that leads to high-quality leads.
- More than 50% of companies are unable to produce top-notch content to attract more traffic to their site.
- 45% of marketers are unable to produce content that connects with their audience.
As a result, if you fall into the above categories, then Discover will have a hard time picking up your content. But there are two ways to help you:
1. Learn to produce better content, or
2. Hire freelance content writers to fill the gap.
They will help you produce quality content for both humans and search engines. Top influencers and content marketers use freelance writers to create marketing content for their blogs and other marketing channels.
To support this claim, 2020 Semrush research results show that the primary content format for 86% of businesses is blog posts. 53% of these marketers also outsource their content creation activities.
So, if you can’t write, you can outsource your writing to freelance writers or learn how to do it.
2. Use quality images
Google Discover emphasizes the need for more visual content. This means that to increase your chances of being featured on this platform, you need to produce high-quality images and optimize them effectively.
According to Google, Discover content ranks well in searches due to the quality of the content and the connection between the audience’s interest and the content. To increase the ranking of your content on Google Discover, you need to do two things:
1. Consistently produce engaging content for readers.
2. Use high-quality visuals, including videos, photos, infographics, and graphics, to enhance your posts and optimize them properly.
How to Get Featured on Google Discover
Also, replace small images and thumbnails with large images. Why? According to Google, large images perform better in Discover cards. Please note the statistics reported by Google:
- Marketers increased time on page by 3%
- Publishers saw a 5% increase in click-through rate (CTR).
- They also saw a 3% increase in user satisfaction.
All of the above is thanks to large, high-quality images. However, ensure that your photos are at least 1200 pixels wide.
3. Create engaging videos
If you produce high-quality visual content, the new Google Feed will also give your content more exposure. Additionally, since videos have become increasingly important recently, Discover is also focusing more on visual content.
So, create different types of videos to capture the attention of your target market and solve their problems. We recommend that you look at top-performing blogs and create videos from them. These pieces of content are currently driving more engagement on social media and achieving better rankings in Google and other search engines.
Therefore, converting them into video content will help improve your website’s engagement rate, SEO ranking, and visibility in Discover.
Android Programming or Web Design?
To get started, you can create the following videos:
- Video tutorials
- Behind-the-scenes videos of your company
- How-to videos on how to use your products or services
- Expert interviews
- Case study videos
- etc.
Our goal is to create compelling and engaging videos that resonate with your audience. Ultimately, customers want to see more videos from their target marketers.
According to HubSpot research, more than 50% of customers want to watch videos more than any other type of content. This means that the more quality videos you produce, the better your chances of appearing in Google Discover.
4. Follow Google’s content policies
Google has made it clear that if you want Discover to select your content and show it to searchers, you must follow their content policies. Google’s guidelines include Search Quality Rating, which covers Page Quality Rating (PQ) and Needs Meet Rating (NM).
This means that every post you publish must follow the Google News guidelines.
This step does not mean that your content will appear in Google News. Instead, it shows that if Discover selects your content, it means that you have followed Google News’ content policies and can reach Google News-appropriate content.
So, make sure that your published blogs comply with Google’s content publishing policies to increase the likelihood of your content appearing in Discover.
5. Ask your audience to add you to Google Discover
The Discover app has some interesting features. This app allows you to add your favorite sources to your collections. So you choose and follow the topics that interest you.
Your audience may not know that they can add you to their favorite topics or collections unless you tell them. That’s why you should let your community of readers know to add you to Google Discover. That way, they’ll be notified when you publish a post or when Discover picks up content from your blog.
How to Get Featured on Google Discover
This works like a call-to-action on your website. Visitors can’t take the action you want them to take without being asked to do so. Similarly, if you don’t tell them, they might not add your blog to Discover.
How to Add Interesting Topics to Google Discover
Adding interesting topics to Discover is easy. For example, here I’m adding Semrush to my list of interesting topics. Here’s how to do it:
Open the app and type your search term into the search bar. Here, we’ve searched for Semrush. See the screenshot below. So, with the addition of Semrush, we will receive Semrush updates through Google Discover.
However, your results page may not show the “Follow+” button. Our search result did not show this tab. So, as you can see in the screenshot, we went a little further down and found it. Similarly, if you typed in your topic or blog in the search and did not see the Follow button, don’t worry. Just scroll down a little, and you will find it.
Once you see the button, tap “Follow+” to start following a blog or topic of interest. After tapping the Follow button, the (+) sign will change to a (✓) sign. The check mark means that you are currently following the topic or publication of your choice.
That’s why when a new post is published on the Semrush blog, Google Discover will also show us that article. This also helps to engage existing readers further.
This way, when more people add your blog to Discover, Google will also see that your content is valuable and relevant to readers. Thus, it will increase your ranking in the search engine and consolidate your position in Discover.
6. Optimize for Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Why should we optimize for Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages? Because AMP is ideal for enhancing the user experience (UX) of a website. So, as you know, improving the user experience is a factor in Google’s ranking. Hence, Google developers designed AMP with speed in mind.
Faster loading of a web page helps improve the user experience (UX), which in turn increases audience satisfaction. In other words, if your site does not perform fast, it will reduce your search ranking, and your chances of being selected by Discover will also decrease. The audience will also leave your blog for this reason, which is in favor of your competitors.
So, if you want to be seen in Discover, optimizing for Google’s accelerated mobile pages is a must. That’s why the Discover reporting feature in Google Search Console (GSC) gives you the option to compare AMP and non-AMP data.
From your Search Console, you can measure AMP and non-AMP data, respectively. Optimize your website for AMP to enhance the user experience and increase visibility in Discover.
7. Publish evergreen and trending content regularly
As mentioned, Google Discover shows fresh and evergreen content that is relevant to the user’s query. These results are presented based on the user’s previous search history. This helps users stay informed about industry trends.
Discover will also show popular content and evergreen content that is relevant to your search. Google Discover also offers evergreen content designed to engage, solve problems, and entertain readers. Meanwhile, popular posts attract readers and keep you up to date.
Interestingly, this is a win-win marketing strategy. When you create valuable, evergreen content, Discover picks it up and presents it in relevant search results. As a result, you’ll increase your site traffic, improve brand awareness, generate targeted leads, and make more sales.
8. Do competitor research
Why is competitor research necessary? If, after doing all of the above, your post is still not in Discover, then it’s wise to do competitor research to find out why Discover is ignoring your content.
Try to understand the following:
- Why does Google Discover prefer your competitors’ content over yours?
- Why isn’t your content on the Discover platform?
- What is your competitor doing differently to appear in Google Discover?
- What made your competitors’ content popular?
- Etc.
By studying your competitors, you will understand how to display your content in Discover. You should also follow related topics in Google Discover. At this stage, you will gain a better understanding of the quality of content that is organized and presented to users by the content marketing tool.
With the help of this data, you will understand user behavior and understand why Discover preferred your competitors over you.
Finally
Now that you are familiar with Google Discover and how to optimize your content for it, use these tips to improve your chances of being featured on the platform. The more you increase the quality of your content, the more likely you are to be featured. So, keep experimenting to find what works best for you.
If you are currently using Discover, are there any other tips you think can help your audience? Please share your thoughts with us.