Optimizing your website’s SEO is one of the best ways to set your business up for digital marketing success. But it’s not the only search feed that matters anymore. Google Discovery has brought about an entirely new era of digital marketing.
What is Google Discovery?
Google Discovery is a personalized feed of information that people get on the Google Chrome mobile application and as a standalone feature on Android devices.
It acts similarly to a social media feed that suggests content a user might find interesting based on their previous searches and the types of material that they interact with consistently.
How It Works
Google Discovery suggests a wide variety of content that a user might find interesting, which can include:
- News articles
- Blog posts
- Videos
- Real-time information (about things like sports scores)
- And even advertisements
Users don’t search for any of this content. But appears in their feed all the same. That presents an interesting opportunity for companies.
If your business can figure out how to get into your target audience’s Google Discovery feed, it may see a significant spike in traffic without having to pay for special ads to get those results.
Below are some strategies that you can use to start getting into your target audience’s Google Discovery feed in the next section.
How to Optimize for Google Discover Search
Some of the content strategies that you’re already using for SEO may also be useful for Google Discover Search. But there are some key differences between these two types of organic marketing that should be kept in mind.
Here’s an overview of the best strategies for making it into your target audience’s Discover feed.
Produce mobile-friendly content
Google Discover is only available on smartphones and tablets. That means if you haven’t been creating mobile-friendly content already, now is the time to start.
Generally, that means using a mobile responsive design that adapts how your content is displayed based on the device and web browser that someone uses to access it.
Additionally, you can give your audience a better mobile viewing experience by removing intrusive advertisements and pop-ups from your content and making sure the images that you include with the content are mobile responsive.
Invest in good imagery
A recent case study found that images play a key role in getting featured on Google Discover feeds. As a general rule of thumb, your content will perform better if you create unique images that tie in with the content and feature them.
For example, let’s say you’re producing a blog post about the best smartphones of 2022. Instead of using a stock photo of a smartphone as a featured image for that post, you could create an infographic.
The infographic could contain some of the most useful information from your analysis and present it in an engaging way. The data shows this style of image should help your content perform better.
Other tips for photos include:
- Using a descriptive caption and engaging alt text
- Using the right file name for the image
- Using lossless compression for the image file size
Get active on YouTube
You probably know that Google owns YouTube. So it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that YouTube videos feature heavily in Google Discover feeds.
That means producing written content is great and can get you some solid Google Discover results. But if you really want to optimize your chances of success with this search feed, YouTube matters.
So it could be worth it for your company to start getting active with YouTube content. You don’t even necessarily need to create new content from scratch to begin.
For example, you could use a blog post that you’ve already written and turn it into a YouTube script. Have someone read the script and pair it with some relevant images and videos, and you’ve got a YouTube video and an article that can appear in someone’s Google Discovery feed.
Keep up with trending topics
Google Discover likes to show users content that’s relevant to the moment when it can. It’s similar to how Twitter shows users a list of trending hashtags in their region.
That means another aspect of performing well in Google Discover is putting out content that is timely. This can be pieces of content that cover the latest trends in your industry or opinion pieces about the latest relevant news events.
You can still produce evergreen content, and it will show up in Google Discovery feeds. But you want to make sure that you’re at least updating your evergreen content with some regularity to avoid having Google Discover cast it aside as old news.
How to Check Performance in Google Search Console
Once you get active with your Google Discover content, you can start tracking your performance with it in Google Search Console.
It’ll show you your total number of impressions, clicks, and click-through rate for any content that’s shown up in the Discover feed over the past 16 months.
This information is exactly what you need to figure out how well you’re doing with Google Discover. It tells you how your performance evolves over time as well. So you can test out new strategies and look at Google Search Console to see whether they work for you or not.
Where to Start
The best way to get started is by coming up with a high-level Google Discover marketing strategy and creating your first pieces of content. Use the tips covered above to guide you as you go and adapt your performance as you start seeing results in Google Search Console.
If you’d like some professional assistance with all of this, consider getting in touch with Oyova. We’re marketing experts who can build out a comprehensive Google Discover strategy for you and help you create the content you need.
Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we can help.
