Google Discover optimization guide for 2024: Know how to optimize?

Updated on: Oct 13th, 2024 9 min readWritten by: Approved by: bhagart singh

Last Updated on October 13, 2024 by Admin

Google Discover, rolled out in 2018 (for mobiles), has been a real differentiator among content creators and marketers. This applied technology presents knowledge and information that matches the subscribers’ interests and details depending on the user’s browsing history, even without the need to type a search query.

How to Optimize for Google Discover will be very advantageous to your website in 2024, as it will put you ahead of others and in a position to reach your targeted customers well. This extensive guide will unravel Google Discover optimization and give practical tips to survive the constantly changing digital background.

What is Google Discover & How Does it Work?

Google Discover is a personalized content feed that can be viewed on the Google app and mobile site. It relies on strong ML algorithms to create a unique feed for each user by considering their search history, browsing behavior, and other personal factors. Instead of serving search results in an active form, Google Discover delivers relevant content based on people’s interests.

The Google Discover algorithm keeps evolving, learning from the user’s interaction and feedback to tailor the recommendations. It takes into account various signals, such as:

  • Search History
  • Browsing behavior
  • Location
  • Device usage
  • Engagement with similar content

Why Should You Optimize for Google Discover?

Yes, you probably should. Here’s why:

  • Increased Visibility: The Google Discover platform, featuring over 800 million monthly active users, could be a great tool to connect with a broader audience beyond the regular search results.
  • Targeted Audience: Through personalized content recommendations, Google Discover users can connect with others who share a passion for the same topics within their niche or industry.
  • Higher Engagement: People tend to be more engaged with content related to their interests, increasing the click-through rate, time on site, and user satisfaction levels.
  • Brand Awareness: Being on the Google Discover feeds is important as it improves the business’s brand awareness and builds its authority.
  • Diversified Traffic Sources: You can appreciate using Google Discover because it enables you to have diverse traffic sources, which reduces your sole reliance on traditional SEO.

How to Optimize for Google Discover?

To maximize your probability of appearing in Google Discover feeds and How to Optimize for Google Discover, follow these proven optimization strategies:

1. Optimize for E-E-A-T

According to Google Discovers documentation, it relies on signals and criteria such as Google Search to assess the usefulness of content. In the case of search, a key factor is E E A T, which stands for:

E: Experience

E: Expertise

A: Authoritativeness

T: Trustworthiness

To optimize for E-E-A-T and improve your chances of appearing in Google Discover:

  • Showcase your authority by developing top-notch, research-based content with insights that present real value for your target audience.
  • Feature your expertise and talents, including full author bios, ‘About’ pages, and written feedback from clients and customers.
  • Grow brand authority by linking to trustworthy sites with a domain similar to your business or industry.
  • Provide factual, contemporary information, cite reliable sources, and maintain a consistent identity and messaging on each channel to maintain reliability.

To further enhance your E-E-A-T signals:

  • Keep on changing your content so that it becomes always handy and precise.
  • Share with your audience through comments, social media, and other channels to develop relationships and show your expertise.
  • Work with other professionals respected in the field to develop co-authored content or get a guest posting opportunity.

2. Avoid Titles that Resemble Clickbait

The title of your content is the first thing the users discover when your post gets displayed to them in the users’ personalized Google Discover feed. Writing a title that gives a quick understanding of the content but also manages to sustain the readers’ curiosity is crucial. Here are some tips to craft compelling titles:

  • Make it brief and distinct but precise and informative at all times.
  • Use strong, result-based words that lure people or focus on a particular issue.
  • Use numbers or listicles to show a clear and tangible structure and add value to your offer.
  • Aim to avoid clickbait or sensationalized language that can mislead the audience.

Examples of effective titles:

“10 Proven Strategies to Boost Your Google Discover Traffic”

“The Ultimate Guide to Optimize Your Content for Google Discover”

“5 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Creating Content for Google Discover”

3. Use Compelling, High-Quality Images

Images are, in fact, the main element of the Google Browse platform. Among Google Discover’s posts, you can always see images that take up almost all space within the feed. An image within an article is likely to drive the click-through rates as much as it provides for an appealing and exciting visual.

Regarding technical requirements for images, Google’s guidelines are as follows:

  • Add attention-grabbing photos, especially larger ones that attract more visitors.
  • If the images are large, they should be 1200 px in width.
  • The max-image-preview should enable images through the bigger format, which may come through AMP.
  • Don’t use a site logo as an image. Instead, it’s better to use an appropriate picture.

Closing these criteria will lower the probability of your site being left out of Discover feeds due to the quality of your website pictures only.

4. Optimize Your Content for Mobile

As Google’s Discovery page is a mobile-first feature, mobility optimization of your content can not be avoided to make your content easy to find and user-friendly on smartphones. Here are some key considerations:

  • Use an adaptive web design that automatically adjusts to different screen sizes and orientations. It provides a consistent experience regardless of the device.
  • Pages that load quickly using small file sizes, browser caches, and optimized code and server performance should be given high priority.
  • Use clear fonts, appropriate spacing, and short, crisp paragraphs to ensure your content is easily readable on lower screens.
  • Optimize the website’s navigation and structure so viewers can easily explore and uncover pertinent topics.

Mobile optimization best practices:

  • Conduct mobile compatibility tests for your web tool using tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test and PageSpeed Insights.
  • Go for only a few pop-ups, interstitials, or other intrusive items that may irritate the user’s experience on mobile devices.
  • Use schema markup to provide a well-structured, precise data format about your content and boost its availability of rich snippets or carousels on Google Discover.
  • Look for a reliable mobile analytics toolkit to help you identify weak spots and assess the long-term effects of your optimization measures.

5. Produce Timely Content

SEOs do their best to keep up with industry news to spot trends and thus offer relevant content just when it is needed. As Google Discover aims to deliver content to users when needed, the relevance and speed of spreading stories and trends could increase. Ultimately, AI is better than the average SEO in determining trends.

Considering this fact, it is vital to keep a close eye on the latest developments and use these content opportunities to increase your chances of appearing in Google Discover. Moreover, this makes the ongoing optimization of your existing content vital as the only way to ensure the relevance of the information.

6. Follow SEO Best Practices

Moreover, be informed that you need to go for the overall advanced SEO tactics guidelines.

This includes:

  • Use Titles and descriptions that contain keywords.
  • Always featuring the query words is the way to go in your content.
  • You can get alt text added to images of your website.
  • Use internal links to other related pages on your website.
  • Implementing an efficient website that will work properly on all sorts of devices.

Measuring Google Discover Performance in GSC

Google Search Console (GSC) provides valuable insights into your Google Discover performance. Here’s how to interpret the data:

1. Metrics Definitions

GSC offers three primary metrics to gauge your Google Discover performance:

  • Clicks: This metric is a measure of users clicking on your content in Google feeds of the Discover section, and this metric is considered as the indication of the effectiveness of the headlines and images as well as content appeal.
  • Impressions: Impressions mean that your content shows up in Google Discover feeds for more than one time, and this number is independent of the number of clicks on it or not. This parameter indicates how your content surfers and how many views it gets inside the Discovery tool.
  • CTR (Click-Through Rate): The CTR is calculated by splitting the number of clicks by the number of impressions shown, and the result is expressed as percent. It is a brainer that a high click-through rate means that your content is meaningful and relevant to users. On the other hand, a low CTR may point to the need for improvement in your titles, images, or content.

2. Trendlines

The control panel also includes trendlines specific to each data source. According to the search engine’s algorithms, your article will usually be available on the same day it was topical for people.

The configuration section of this report illustrates that the dashboard provides a suitable platform for the user who may be required to select a specific day in the table below to determine from which website or URL the reported traffic increase is sourced.

3. Data Aggregation

The report’s page statistics data are accumulated, so if a single domain provides more than one Google Discover result per user session, each result is credited to the page URL rather than the domain.

It is also worth pointing out that all page/URL metrics are passed or rolled up to a single “canonical” URL. This means the canonical URL in the report would always be the URL shown, which also means that the report would not show the AMP version URL, as the AMP version is usually canonicalized. In turn, the canonical version will have AMP’s metrics combining all metrics.

Conclusion

Implementing the optimization strategies offered in this How to Optimize for Google Discover guide will ensure you can appear in Google Discover feeds and expand your potential viewers.

With Google Discover being a core element of search this year, it is pivotal for all search engine marketers to optimize for it in 2024. By staying ahead of the trend and adapting your content strategy in time, you can use this aspect to create a positive effect for your brand.

Perform them today and strive to find the impact—just visit AlgoSaga Internet marketing agency. The future of content exploration is here; the time to get enthused about it is right now.