If you’re a professional blogger, you’re probably already familiar with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). However, you might be wondering: What is Google Discover, and how can I use it for my blog? 🤔
Google Discover is a personalized feed that comes up in the Google app. It shows pages and articles that are tailored to the user’s interests, based on their search queries and web activity. As a content creator, you can optimize your site so that it becomes visible in this feed, generating more clicks.
In this post, we’ll take a closer look at what is Google Discover and why you should optimize your site for it. Then, we’ll look at a few things you could do to increase your visibility on this platform. Let’s get started! 🎬
What is Google Discover?
If you have the Google app on your phone, you’re probably already familiar with Google Discover. This is a feed that appears on the app’s homepage, with articles from websites that you follow or frequently visit.
👉 Each post appears in the feed as a card:
Google may also display results based on your web queries. For example, if you’ve recently been looking at holidays in Spain, you might see some articles from travel blogs that specialize in that destination.
Additionally, users can personalize their feeds. For instance, you can add your interests to Google, follow your favorite pages, and instruct Google to stop showing you posts from particular websites.
Why it’s important to optimize your site for Google Discover
Now that you know what is Google Discover, let’s see how this feature can be beneficial to your website.
This platform can help you reach people who are interested in the type of content you write. For example, if you have a blog on DIY projects and a user spends their free time looking at how-to videos and articles, there’s a great likelihood your content will appear in their feed. Plus, since it appeals to their interests, they are more likely to click on it and visit your site.
Additionally, optimizing your site for Google Discover can help you nurture a loyal following. Users who like your content can add your site to their personalized feed. This enables them to stay up-to-date with your latest articles.
How to optimize your site for Google Discover
As we have seen, Google Discover can help you target the right audience and build a loyal following. Let’s look at a few ways you can optimize your blog for this platform.
- Make sure your site is mobile-friendly
- Create descriptive headlines and high-quality content
- Install the Web Stories plugin
1. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly 📱
Google Discover is a feature that’s available on the Google mobile app. Therefore, if you want your blog to feature in users’ feeds, make sure you have a mobile-friendly site.
You can start by ensuring that your posts are easy to read on smaller screens. This may involve using brief paragraphs to improve readability and compressing photos to reduce loading times.
To check your site’s performance on mobile phones, you can run a Core Web Vitals test in Google Search Console:
This tool will let you know which pages on your site provide a good mobile experience, and which ones don’t. Google will flag any pages that take longer than 2.6 seconds to load. Typically, these pages contain extensive files, such as unoptimized hero images or videos.
By making your blog mobile-friendly, you can improve your rankings in search results and increase your chances of appearing in Google Discover. Plus, if users enjoy your content and find it easy to read on their phones, they are more likely to add your site to their feed.
2. Create descriptive headlines and high-quality content ✍️
Another way to optimize your blog posts for Google Discover is to use effective headlines. These should tell readers what the content is about. For example, if it’s a guide on starting a website, you could use a descriptive title like “How to Start a WordPress Website in 5 Easy Steps.”
Over 14 percent of Google searches are in the form of a question, the majority of them starting with “how” [1]. Therefore, you could also craft your headlines as a question to grab your audience’s attention and show them that your post can answer that query.
Remember that Google will try to select the most relevant content for the user, based on their interests and web searches. Therefore, the titles should aptly reflect the topic of your posts.
Similarly, you’ll want to publish content that targets your audience’s primary interests. Additionally, your posts should be relevant, original, and helpful.
3. Install the Web Stories plugin 🔌
Web Stories are a web-based version of the “Stories” that you see on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. They provide an interactive experience with video, audio, images, animation, and more.
These stories can appear on Google Discover as a carousel near the top of the feed. Typically, this carousel displays content from lifestyle, beauty, fitness, and wellness sites.
At the time of writing, this carousel is only available in the United States, India, and Brazil. However, your web stories can also appear on Google Discover feed as a card.
Google has created a WordPress plugin, Web Stories, that helps you turn your posts into a visual storytelling format:
Once you install the plugin on your site, you can go to Stories in your WordPress dashboard to create your first story:
You can select a template and use the drag-and-drop editor to add different elements to your story:
When you’re ready, you can just publish your story on the web. This will have its own title, description, and permalink, so you’ll want to make sure that you use relevant keywords in all these fields.
Conclusion 🧐
This post looked at what is Google Discover. It is a feed of articles and posts that are personalized to match the user’s interests. As a blogger, it can help you target visitors who are interested in the type of content you produce and build a loyal base of readers.
👉 To recap, here’s how to optimize your site for Google Discover:
- 📱 Make sure your site is mobile-friendly.
- ✍️ Creative descriptive headlines and high-quality content.
- 🔌 Use the Web Stories plugin to create visual narratives.
Do you have any questions about what is Google Discover and how to optimize your site for it? Let us know in the comments section below!
Or start the conversation in our Facebook group for WordPress professionals. Find answers, share tips, and get help from other WordPress experts. Join now (it’s free)!