Speaker 1: What is Google Discover? Some of us who use Google every day don't even know that this feature exists and as bloggers, some of us see this Discover tab on Search Console, but we don't actually know how to optimize for it. So in this video, we will share with you what to look out for in Google Discover and a couple of tips to help you maximize this traffic source. Let's go. Hey, it's Jack from RankMap and we have constantly been providing you with the most updated knowledge and tools with regards to SEO. So if you haven't subscribed to our channel yet, we hope you do so and if this video provides value to you, do help us out by smashing the thumbs up button. One thing to be clear, there is no exact method to optimize your content for Google Discover or a button to click and your content will be displayed. It is all up to Google's discretion to display your content and that's why you should never rely on Google Discover as a main traffic source for your site because it is unpredictable. Discover traffic should be viewed as supplementary to your search traffic. Now, what is Google Discover? Well, you know YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and TikTok display short-form videos based on what they think you'd like to watch. It's the same with Google Discover but instead of delivering short-form videos, they deliver articles and videos from YouTube based on what Google Discover thinks you might be interested in. But how do they decide what you might be interested in? Assuming you use Google Discover with their AI and machine learning algorithms such as the Google News AI ML and a topic layer in the knowledge graph, links to these pages are in the description. They analyze your Google product activities such as your search activity, the videos you have watched on YouTube, your engagement with the results on Google Discover and the more you interact with Google products, the better it understands your interests. So if you love cooking and you often search for new recipes, watch cooking videos from YouTube, you will start seeing more articles and videos about cooking tips, kitchen gadgets and recipes on your Google Discover feed. It also considers location history and settings to deliver relevant local content to your feed. So if you have searched for best fried chicken store near me, Google Discover might start to show contents like this fried chicken store is Youngster's new hangout spot or KFC's new fried chicken recipe. And finally, they will also analyze the topics you follow, such as if you tap the options button, select manage your interests, select your interests, and you will see the topics you follow as well as some topics Google has suggested based on your activity. Basically, any types of articles or videos that are indexed by Google are eligible to be displayed on Google Discover, but as long as they adhere to the Discover content policies. If you want to find out more about these policies, the link is in the description. However, they may not display job applications, petitions, forms, code repositories, or satirical content without any context on Google Discover. Now in case you have never seen Google Discover before on your Google Chrome app or on the Google app, it means you might have turned it off or you might have disabled the web and app activity on the Google account you've signed into. To find this setting on your Google app, tap on your Google profile at the top right corner, tap on manage your Google account, under data and privacy, scroll down, and you will see the web and app activity. You may have turned this setting off unknowingly, that's why Google Discover is not showing for you. Alright, now that we know what Google Discover is, let us share with you a couple of tips on how you can optimize your content for it. Now Google Discover focuses on visual appeal as it displays content that users are likely to be interested in. So whenever you upload a featured image for your article, just take a step back from the point of view of an author, and think about it from the point of view of your audience. As an audience who is interested in the same topic, will you click on that image? If yes, what makes you want to click? If no, what is preventing you from clicking it? Knowing these little details, it can improve the likelihood of more Google Discover traffic. Another thing about Google Discover images is that you want to upload a featured image that is at least 1,200 pixels wide, and enable the max image preview large meta tag. If you are still using AMP, may I ask why? And you want to avoid using a site logo as your post image. These are recommended by Google. Okay, the 1,200 pixels wide image is doable, I just need to resize the image, but the max image preview meta tag, that's kind of complicated, right? Well, if you use RankMath, this is actually a default setting. Just visit any post or page, go to RankMath's tab, under the advanced tab, you will see the max image preview setting, set to large by default. You have the option to set it to standard or none. If you set it to standard, your image may look like this on Google Discover, which is not desirable. We want our image to appear in full width. And then, if we set it to none, no image will be displayed, and Google Discover may not even show your article. So have it on large. In case your default setting is not set to large, and you want it to be large across the board on all your posts or pages, go to RankMath's titles and meta, under the post type, scroll below, expand the post robots meta, and right over here under the advanced robots meta, you will see the image preview setting. You can set it to large, and remember to save changes. It is as simple as that. And for some reason, if you are still using AMP, under RankMath's dashboard, you can toggle the AMP module on, and we will automatically add the required meta tags for you. You see, RankMath does things for you in the background that helps you adhere to the best practices without you knowing, and now, we are empowering you with the knowledge so that you know what's happening. Titles are a complement to the image. Both have to work in sync to make your article click-worthy on Google Discover. But Google is really making it tough, am I right? I mean, click-baity titles work, why won't they accept it? Like this secret trick will make you write like Stephen King, or your life will change forever with these apps, or this one trick will change how your articles rank. These are great titles that will get clicks, but no, if you want to show up on Google Discover, write your titles this way instead. Instead of this secret trick will make you write like Stephen King, write how to improve your writing skills in five steps. Instead of your life will change forever with these apps, write top seven productivity apps to boost your daily life. And instead of this one trick will change how your articles rank, write five proven techniques to improve SEO. Also, you want to avoid incomplete context in snippets, such as how to get rich dot dot dot, or how to cook like Gordon R dot dot dot. If the title is truncated because of the character limitation of Google Discover, that's fine, but do not purposely eliminate some text so that people will click through to see what you're talking about. You want to give clear and concise information in the title, and what gets people to click is if they believe they will receive the value you communicate on your title. When you promise people they are going to learn something, and they believe they are going to learn something, that's going to get a click. Google Discover dislikes titles as if you're hiding something or holding something back, and to get that something, people have to click to read. So when you decide on a title, think about it from the point of view of Google Discover. Is it misleading, exaggerating, or lacking context? While this is not an official tip recommended by Google, schema markups or structured data is a way to help search engines understand more about your content. And the easier you allow Google to understand more about your content, the more likelihood it will be displayed on Google Discover. But make sure to add only the relevant schema markups. For example, by default, if you use RankMath, whenever you write a post, an article schema is automatically added for you. If you are reviewing a software, such as writing a review on RankMath, you can add a software schema and include the relevant data together with the review rating. Or if you are writing a news article, you can utilize our News Sitemap module in RankMath Pro to add a news article schema to your post where you can see it right here in the page source of the post. If you want to learn more about how to use our News Sitemap, you can check out this video right here. We have mentioned this before on our other videos and we will mention it again since it is relevant. If Google sees your content as trustworthy, they will have no problems in ranking your content higher or displaying your content on Google Discover and other places. But how does Google know if your content is trustworthy? It boils down to you as a writer. Google will crawl the web and analyze videos, articles, podcasts, mentions, guest posts, or whatever content you have created or are featured in to determine if you are trustworthy as a content creator for the topic you are writing about. So to optimize for EEAT, do not just focus on writing blog posts. You've got to expand your reach to other types of content I've mentioned about and to be the authority in your niche. Now, not every topic requires you to optimize for EEAT. If you are writing articles about BBQ, gardening, or hobbies that anyone can pick up, you don't actually need to go a long way to gain authority. But if you are writing about finance, health, or topics that would require an expert's opinion, then EEAT is super important. So know when to fight the battle. If no one is searching for a content, it makes no sense to write the piece of content. Am I right? So doing keyword research or topic research is super important. And if you find a topic to write about, you've got to make sure that it is written in an engaging way. Maybe share stories, examples, useful insights that serve the search intent. So the featured image and title we have talked about earlier, together with the content itself, have to be in sync. This is SEO 101, and it is one of the requirements for Google Search. You've got to optimize your content for Google Search before optimizing your content for Google Discover. If you struggle to find topics with high search volume, we recommend to check out this video right here. We've shared a lot of tips in there. And since Google Discover is a supplementary feature of Search, it means that the traffic from Google Discover is supplementary to your usual search traffic. And that's why, on top of creating content with user intent, you should focus on topics that are ever green as well. Google Discover does not only show feeds that are recent or current. They will display an article or video even if it was written or created a couple of years ago. As long as your content matches a user's web behavior and interests, the content may be displayed. Sure, news articles get displayed more often, but the frequency of being displayed may diminish over time. Hence, evergreen content like the Ultimate Guide to Make Money on YouTube, Common Gardening Mistakes Beginners Should Avoid, may be displayed on Google Discover for a very long time because the topic never gets old. But the content may get old. That's why we recommend to update your evergreen content periodically. Make the habit to review all the contents that are over a year old to see if any parts of the content are outdated, not relevant, or out of style. Using our analytics module, you can easily identify keywords your article is ranking for so that you can optimize this article to serve the search intent of those other keywords. And if you want to know how to give your content a refresh, check out this video right here. You see, we have covered a lot of topics to help you grow your search traffic, and there'll be more to come. So if you haven't subscribed to our channel yet, consider doing so. In this day and age, there is no excuse that your site is not mobile-friendly. There are so many WordPress themes out there that are mobile-friendly by default. So if your site does not look good on mobile, it's time to change to a mobile-friendly WordPress theme. But before that, you may want to use this link to test if a page on your site is mobile-friendly before making any big changes. The link is in the description. Web Stories appear on Google Search, Google Images, and even Google Discover. It will appear on Google Discover in the form of a carousel near the top of the feed, or a single card like this. So this is an additional content format that will help your site generate more traffic. The idea of web stories is that if someone visits your content and doesn't want to read everything, they can watch the stories and get an overview of the topic quickly. To implement web stories on your site, you need to install the Web Stories WordPress plugin by Google. Once installed, you can either select a template to work on, or create a new story from scratch. Then build your web stories by adding relevant images or videos to it. And once you're done, publish it, and thereafter, you can embed the web stories on your posts by adding the web stories blog. There are several guidelines to follow. The link to this blog is in the description. The link to this page is in the description. If it is too complicated for you, just use RankMath regardless if it is the free or pro version. We have a Google Web Stories module that will help you adhere to the guidelines without you knowing. More information about how we can use our Google Web Stories can be found on this page. The link is in the description. In your Google Search console, you may see there is a Discover tab in the menu item, and this allows you to see the performance of your content on Google Discover. You can track the impressions and clicks. If you divide the clicks against impressions to find the click through rate, and the result is dismal, you can think about improving it by either changing the featured image of the post, or optimizing the page title. You should also keep track of the Security and Menu Actions tab in your Search console to see if there are any violations on the Google Discover guidelines. Do address them immediately if you find any violations, as you may lose Discover traffic quickly. Again, as we have said earlier, don't bank your hopes on getting constant traffic from Google Discover because violation or not, it is unpredictable. Just follow the tips we have mentioned, incorporate those steps into your current workflow, and most likely you will start getting traffic from Google Discover. And if that happens, great. Now you have an additional source of traffic. Anyway, if you found value in this video, we hope you can support us by smashing that thumbs up button. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below. As always, we are constantly improving our plugin and providing the most updated SEO knowledge to you on this channel. So if you want to get notified on all our updates, subscribe to our channel. This is Jack from RankMath, I hope to see you in our other videos.