Google Discover is a service through which Google offers fascinating content to smartphone and tablet users.
Its particularity lies in the possibility of finding content that interests you without carrying out any research. Content marketers therefore leverage this Google feature to drive traffic to their websites. It pays off, as Google Discover is optimized to work on smartphones and tablets. But to take advantage of the opportunities it offers, you must first understand how it works.
What is Google Discover and how to index your content there? We tell you everything in this file.
What is Google Discover?
Google Discover is a free artificial intelligence application offered by Google with the aim of offering you content adapted to your needs.
The service brings together all the information collected during your Internet browsing for a better understanding of your areas of interest. More concretely, Google Discover uses your search history to offer you web content.
This is an evolution of the old Google News feed. It now takes into account the content of all websites. Initially, it was only news sites. When it was first created, Google Discover only worked on Android devices. But since then, it has evolved and is now present on iOS and Apple devices.
The software recommends content to you even before performing a search. You find interesting topics without entering a query. But for that, Google had to make big improvements to its old software. Discover takes into account different types of content such as:
- the news,
- multimedia (photos/images and videos),
- recently published blog posts,
- or evergreen content, etc.
Google Search and Google Discover: what are the differences?
Both Google Search (search bar) and Google Discover are free products from Google for the promotion of information.
In the Google search bar, the user performs a search based on one or more keywords. He thus obtains relevant results corresponding to his search intention.
With Google Discover, you no longer make a request (neither in writing nor via Google Assistant).
The application automatically presents you with articles in the form of a personalized feed corresponding to your needs and centers of interest.
Most of the featured content comes from the Google News feed. But unlike the Google News service, Google Discover also takes into account AMP articles written on other sites and enriched data.
Google Discover, for whom?
Google Discover does not display content from all websites. It uses very strict selection criteria: it mainly targets sites with high authority.
In other words, Google Discover prefers large websites with many individual pages that have proven themselves.
It favors websites that meet its requirements in terms of competence, expertise and reliability. Fortunately, Google has provided webmasters with a number of SEO guidelines to follow. They are known by the acronym EAT: Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (in French: expertise, authority, reliability).
However, having a small site does not automatically disqualify your content.
In reality, Google Discover also displays content from news sites, specialized media or magazines that do not necessarily have a very high authority. here, these are relevant sites with high user trust.
How to make your content appear on Google Discover?
As with Google News, you cannot ask Google to include your content among those displayed on Google Discover.
Google, the center for Google publishers, is responsible for analyzing and selecting the sites whose content will be displayed. All you have to do is optimize your site for Google Discover. Here are some practical tips to make it happen.
Technical optimizations
Optimizing a website starts with technical optimization. This is to have:
A mobile-friendly site
Google Discover is only available on smartphones and tablets. Your site must therefore be 100% suitable for mobile display to have a chance of appearing there. This implies having a responsive site on mobiles and tablets.
A powerful website
Since Google strives to provide the best possible user experience to Internet users, it prefers sites that load quickly.
For example, a site whose loading speed exceeds 3 seconds is too slow according to Google. You can use the PageSpeed tool to check the loading speed of your site and optimize it if necessary. If you are a news site, it is recommended that you use AMP.
Comply with SEO optimization rules
Google's search engine optimization rules also apply to Google Discover.
Concretely, you must check that everything is working correctly:
- semantic markup,
- the News sitemap,
- the NewsArticle microformat,
- your URL,
- your internal and external links…
Good writing practices
After the technical optimization of your site, you must also ensure the quality and relevance of your articles.
Here are some tips for doing so:
Produce trending and fresh content
The fresher your content, the more interesting it will be for Google Discover and for its users.
Google also recommends regularly publishing relevant and recent content. Regularity is required here not only to show your commitment, but also to strengthen your notoriety.
For example, you can take inspiration from search trends thanks to Google Trends to offer articles related to current events.
Write for users
An article written solely for the purpose of referencing its site on Google has little chance of appearing on Google Discover.
Indeed, Google knows how to identify content filled with keywords, but without real added value. To receive traffic from Google Discover, you must write on interesting topics and not on keywords. You can for example:
- make videos to learn how to do something step by step;
- give useful advice and tips on a daily basis;
- inform about a current topic,
- tell a story.
Recommendations for producing quality content
As with all of its services, Google emphasizes high-quality content.
You must offer your audience rich content with high added value so that your content is interesting to read. The more your content suits your audience, the more your interaction rate will increase. This will also prompt shares on social media, via email, etc.
As a reminder, quality content is content:
- relevant, well-documented and respecting Google EAT criteria;
- regularly updated;
- including multimedia content (images, audio, videos, etc.);
- attractive in form;
- that generates interaction and encourages engagement.
How to seduce Google Discover?
Now that you know how to optimize your site and content, let's find out how to get the attention of Google Discover:
Mention the author and the source
Google insists on the importance of mentioning information about the authors of your content and their sources.
This strengthens the trust of Google and its users. You must clearly and transparently indicate the names and sources of the authors of your content.
Adding contact data (phone number, email address, address) will only increase your reliability. Be sure to provide accurate information. Incomplete or contradictory false information will be counterproductive.
Avoid misleading content
For Discover, Google penalizes sites that use false, exaggerated or misleading information in order to attract attention.
He also advises against using provocation or morbid curiosity to get users' attention.
Content that is dangerous, terroristic, inciting hatred, or medical content does not appear in Google Discover. Your content will also not appear in Google Discover if you use vulgar or coarse language.
Please see the Discover Content Policy for more details.
Optimize your page titles
Google recommends using page titles that accurately reflect the essence of your content.
This strengthens the reliability of your site and increases the chances of seeing your content appear in Discover Google. On the other hand, using "flashy" titles with the aim of manipulating the click-through rate will only reduce your chances.
Optimize your images
You need to pay great attention to your visuals since that is what the user sees first. Use engaging, high-quality images (including videos) to drive user engagement. Google also recommends using "large images that are more likely to generate visits with Discover".
On this point, avoid using a site logo as the main image of your articles. If you're using large images, make sure they're under 1200 pixels wide. You will also need to enable them using the AMP format or via the max-image-preview:large parameter.
Outsource your content creation
Creating quality content is one of the biggest challenges for businesses today.
50% of businesses are not good at producing content that generates leads. For marketers, that number rises to 54%.
If you don't have the writing skills to create engaging content for your readership, hire the professionals to write it.
They will produce you top quality content for both Google and humans. This will increase your chances of appearing on Discover.
Optimize your chances with the Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) is a great tool for optimizing a website for search engines.
The tool compiles a performance report for Google Search (the traditional Google search), Google News and Google Discover. However, your site must achieve a certain number of "Discover impressions" in the last 16 months for its performance reports on Google Discover to appear in Search Console.
In the Discover Performance Report, you'll find information about the various ways user behavior can impact your site's performance on Google Discover.
For example, if they click on your poster to land on your site, you register 1 "click". But if they ignore or just share, you don't register a "click", which lowers your click through rate. This can serve as a reference for you to identify the topics that generate clicks and write more articles on these topics.
Google Discover: what are the advantages for your site?
Today, it is estimated that Google Discover provides between 40% and 70% on average of SEO traffic from generalist news sources.
For the press of center of interest in particular the media centered on the lifestyle, this proportion is even more important and represents up to 85% or even 90% of the total SEO traffic.
For digital marketers, the Google Discover newsfeed is an alternative to SERPs to increase their visibility and boost their qualified traffic. This increases your chances of developing your business or products on the web.
Google Discover also has a big advantage for competitor analysis.
All you have to do is specify your areas of interest in the software settings to see the content selected by Google on these themes. This will allow you to keep an eye on your competition and identify content writing topics.
On the other hand, the content of your competitors that appears in Google Discover is that which meets its eligibility rules. You can therefore draw inspiration from this content to understand what your articles must look like to be taken into account. All this data collected will serve as a basis for optimizing your site and your content for Google Discover. However, be careful not to duplicate the content!
