SEO for Google Discover - Learn to Optimize Google Discover Content

Welcome to a new edition of Crawling Mondays. In today's edition, I am going to be getting in depth with SEO for Discover or optimizing for Google Discover, the recommendation engine from Google that probably you have seen integrated in different ways in the Google apps on your mobile, and you might be thinking, does it work like usual SEO? Does it follow different rules? And to clarify all that, I have invited today a couple of SEO specialists who have tons of experience with Google Discover. On one hand, I have Jessie Wilms, who's the audience editor in Canada and co-founder at What the Fuck SEO. Hello, Jessie. How are you? So excited to have you here.

Thank you so much for having us.

On the other hand, I have Shelby Buckley. She's the newsroom SEO editor at The Athletic and also co-founder of What the Fuck SEO. Hello, Shelby. How are you?

Hi, Aleyda. Thank you so much for having us.

Oh, thank you. Thank you for coming. I'm so excited to be learning everything about Google Discover optimization today. Before starting though, I want to thank Content King Crawler Monday's sponsor, Real Time SEO Crawler/Alerting Tool. This is the tool. That you want to be alerted whenever something goes bad. So go and take a look at Content King, start using it, and thank me later. And now we can start with today's conversation about Google Discover. Google Discover is pretty much this functionality that is integrated with Google apps on mobile that recommend us information based on our preferences. How do you see Google Discover? as SEOs who work with publications and the fundamentals about how does it work?

I would probably start by saying Google Discover is super fun and interesting to think about because so much of it is unknown. And so it's a really interesting and fun process to figure out what works for you as a publication on Google Discover. I would also caveat this entire conversation about Google Discover specifically for publishers with the note that like Google Discover traffic is super unpredictable and there's no guarantee that all your optimization efforts are going to result in something taking off on Google Discover. And often what we see in newsrooms is that some story that we did not think was gonna be a winner on Google Discover just takes off and has bonkers traffic coming to it and just all this interest that we could not have bet on. So my first point when it comes to Google Discover is always this traffic is unpredictable. Don't make it part of your targets. Don't make it part of your strategy. Think, yes, think about all the ways that you can optimize for it and all the ways that you can try to put out winners, but also think about it more in terms of like, this is great bonus traffic that we get from Discover and not core traffic that is going to really grow our business or build us an audience. Yeah.

I would say that like Discover is this nice to have. Like we do a lot of our regular optimization mostly around top stories or trying to get in the news boxes, possibly around Google News or like evergreen. But when it comes to Discover, you're really thinking about this like, oh, additional potential traffic from a source that really is unpredictable. But there's really great opportunities with it too, because you start to understand user behavior and where you kind of see those niche opportunities within your content frame of like, oh, okay, we're seeing these specific stories really pick up specific topics, specific authority pieces. Where do you actually be seen regularly on Discover? And because it's so personalized, You start to learn a lot more about your audience in terms of what they actually want to click on too.

Speaking about the main factors that Google Discover takes into account to give visibility to articles, we know that this is very aligned with preferences that you have already shown to Google before because of the usage that you have with the browser or with the app directly, right? And we also know, on the other hand, that Google provides best practices to maximize the chances that your content is provided by Discover as suggestions of people who will tend to like to see that content. So it's pretty much a recommendation engine and these recommendations go into a very line of ensure that you have an image that is big enough, that is optimized enough. On the other hand, they also give best practices for headlines to not be overly clicky and salesy, to follow EEAT best practices. What would you say are not the so well-known best practices that you have seen consistently work well to maximize the chances for your content to perform well in Discover?

I've noticed personally that internal linking is something that I don't think we think about enough when it comes to Google Discover, but actually ends up helping a lot of stories kind of just like pop off. At least for us at The Athletic, we see that a lot of the stories that are in a niche area or a niche topic. Possibly trending, but maybe not the necessarily like main trending one, but an associated piece is all of a sudden doing really, really well on Discover. And this is something that we never expected. And I think internal linking is something that people sometimes will do, but not necessarily put a ton of effort into. But the more that you connect your stories, even the ones that might be a little bit more aspirational, which is where Discover tends to lean, you can, you tend to get more crawling towards them, more exposure, and then they suddenly show up on Discover. The other thing I would note just really quickly is that AMP is sometimes a little like thing that people think about when it comes to optimizing for Discover, or like, does AMP matter when I come into Discover? That sometimes can be a yes and a no conversation because at first Google's guidelines, to your point, said AMP is like this thing that you need to show up in Discover. But we're seeing more publications go off of AMP and seeing a subtle drop in traffic, you know, oh my God, it's dropping already. But then this recovery almost 2 to 3 weeks later. So I don't necessarily know that Google even knows some of its guidelines because it'll say, hey, try this, but then it's actually working in other ways as well.

There's this, let's say, recommendation about analyzing the topics that work well and tend to get you more visibility to stay aligned with your topical authority, right? Those particular topics and areas that you have seen that your audience likes, that they're where you tend to have a good performance to try to replicate that a little bit. Do you think that that is in general true? How would you recommend Especially for newcomers, new websites to start developing that authority to get recommended.

Topic authority is also just a concept that I think is really useful in newsrooms specifically. Like sometimes people get nervous when you start talking about SEO in the context of news. They start worrying that we're going to take directives from Google rather than from editors. And I think topic authority is a really useful way to bridge that gap of like potential nervousness that some people might have about thinking about how to reach readers on search. So topic authority is just subject matter expertise, right? So we build subject matter expertise in Google's mind in the same way that we would as editors. So we write about it consistently and with authority. We talk to experts. We make sure that all of those trust signals are bubbling up on our content. And we really make sure that like we understand and pitch topic authority as a long game. Like this is our expertise that we develop over a period of time. And it's not something that you can just expect to like turn on and immediately see the results tomorrow. So yeah, the way I think about it in a newsroom is like, how do you build topical authority is like how, like think about all the things that you need to build your own expertise. So you gotta start with the top line questions, the who, what, where, when, why, make sure that those pieces of content are easily accessible on your site, making sure that you're using keyword research to understand all the facets of questions people might have. And then talking to experts to make sure that you've got answers to those questions with a great degree of authority and depth and clarity. And then really thinking about it as a, as a long game, like topic authority is just not something that you build quickly. It's something that you need to think about in the long term. So that's how I would pitch it, like specifically in a newsroom is just thinking about it as something that we're going to do over the course of months and years and not days.

Honestly, when it comes to just like, you know, building it out for an e-commerce side or, you know, wanting to do something affiliate. It's the same thing. Like it's all subject matter expertise and that's how Discover looks at it too. It's where is this expertise coming from? What are you giving to the reader that is an additional component to this, right? We talk a lot about 10x content. What makes it a little bit special? What is something niche that's coming from your publication or your site, whether that's a best of guide, is this ratings for a specific thing that then turns into something more e-commerce focused? It's all about just showing that subject matter expertise in a way that Google Discover will look at and say, oh, okay, this this is helping my reader? For example, this morning I was on my Google Discover and it's all about the best travel backpacks because I'm going on a trip in a couple months. And I was like, oh, okay, great. And I started looking through them and guides can be over heavy in buttons or clicking, but this one was more like, if you're going on this specific type of trip, here are some recommendations. If you're going on this specific type of trip, recommendations. So it's almost blending that e-commerce with that publishing expertise, but still giving me what I want. And I still clicked on it. morning.

Amazing. What are the top mistakes do you see people do trying to get into Discover?

Oh yeah. Don't fake your expertise. Don't fake topic authority. Don't fake authorship. Like these are, these are things that are just so fundamental to having good content. Like use people who are really the experts, have them write the expert content, build trust in all the ways, build trust in Google and Google Discover in all the ways that you build trust as a person is one. So just really focus on EEAT and topic authority best practices. And then 2 is don't write boring headlines, which I think is a general best practice across all your content. Your headline is just such an important thing in terms of like getting people, like everyone is gonna see the headline of you and a million other pieces of content. And especially cuz like Discover is a bit more of a scroll as an experience. Like as a reader, when I open Discover, I'm scrolling through a ton of headlines and a ton of really great, high quality, engaging images on, on my Discover feed. So the thing that's gonna get me to click on one piece of content versus the other is whether or not that The other thing for sure, like Jesse pointed on authorship, don't use a general byline.

That is probably my biggest one. I don't think that we state the importance of authorship for Google Discover enough. I think that it's probably one of the bigger signals and back to that subject matter expertise. If you have an author that writes, you know, regularly about health and fitness, the best workouts to keep your joints safe, that's probably a good fit for Google Discover. If they're regularly that byline, that's going to show an authority both to a reader and to Google to maybe surface their stories more often. And so if you use a general byline, say for example, you've got a piece and it just says, you know, the website staff, you're not necessarily directing any of that authorship authority anywhere. Sure, the site is an authority on that subject matter, but the individual that has spent time and experience and has built trust with its readers Are so important to Google Discover. And to Jesse's second point about the headline, if you're able to create something aspirational and showing why this is going to help your life, I find YMYL is very heavy on Discover. You tend to have people kind of click on it more because, you know, back to the earlier example about health and fitness, if you're looking at something and it's like, these are 5 exercises that are easy that you could put into your morning to help your joints. People are more likely to say, oh, I might need that. That's still, you know, focused on what the expertise is and maybe not overly buzzwordy. I might be more inclined to click on that.

And I would also just say, want to go back to authorship for one quick sec. Sometimes I think publishers specifically will use, will revert to the website staff as a byline because multiple people have contributed to a report or many people worked on it. And it's sort of like a, it's a package of content that we've pulled together from Um, a ton of people's expertise. And I would just say, put all those bylines on there. Um, because in addition to like, not only do you want to know who all contributed to a piece, it also then shows up on their author pages, which is also a good signal when someone is like then clicking and trying, like if I like this piece of content, this like book review roundup. And I in particular like a book, liked a book review by one particular author or one particular writer. Like let's say I'm the New York Times and I'm doing a roundup of the best books published in September. That's the headline I saw today in Google Discover on my Google Discover. And I think that there was a really well-written book review by this one particular author. I'm going to go ahead and click on their page and see what other books that they've written. And so that kind of just like little teeny tiny thing can help people go and engage deeper on your site. Because the other thing about Google Discover obviously is like, because we don't really trust it as a consistent publishing, a consistent source of traffic. Once you've got people on your page, you want to make sure that that content is really good, really solid. And to Shelby's point about internal linking. That you have all those on-page tactics executed perfectly when something is doing well in Discover. Because once you've got people on your site from Discover, you wanna give them ample reason to stick around.

One more note on that, like the internal linking part, like if a story is doing really well on Discover and Chartbeat actually just recently integrated like Google Discover as a sidebar of like where the sourcing is coming from for traffic. So if you use Chartbeat, you can actually see that Google Discover is driving certain traffic. Or if you see a story from 2 days ago is doing really well on Discover for a 3rd day, you know, you may want to go into that story, link important stories or link important resources or link an e-commerce area or some type of transactional CTA, because there's likely a chance that they'll find a different way into your site. If they're clicking a random story, they want to know more. So back to Jesse's point, put your best effort into those stories because there is a chance to bring them in the back door.

It's great that you actually mentioned resources, tools that you use to analyze and identify opportunities, because of course we have Google Search Console Discover report, but let's say that they give the minimal, right? They give very fundamental basic information. There are other tools like GD Dash, for example, from John Shihada that provides more insights and trends. Which are the resources, tools that you tend to use to identify opportunities and how do you use them?

Probably. I would start with the shortlist of Google Search Console, the GD-Tool from NewsDash, and Chartbeat with its new Google Discover traffic. I would start as those 3. And then I would say Google Discover is great because you can look historically and see what has performed well in Discover for your site. And I start with Google Discover because sometimes, you know, not every newsroom has every tool, and sometimes the only tool you have available to you is Google Search Console. And there's actually a ton, I think, that you can do with it. Like, you can look at all the stories and you can even just break it out by section to see what section performed best in Google Discover. And then you can sort of manually, if you have to tag it and figure out what are the particular topics that have done really well. So you can use Google Search Console as sort of a starting place if you're trying to get that like historic understanding of what content has done really well in Discover.

I really have enjoyed the integration of Google Discover with Sharpie just because it has allowed publishers, especially because things move so quickly, you're looking at a story that could just pop off really quickly, it's really good to differentiate, is this an active search versus is this a passive like Google Discover? And so it actually allows you to know, is this an actual like search story or is this maybe possibly more of a social trend? So that's been really interesting on the Chartbeat side. The NewsDash, GTDash is really interesting because they use entities and they look at the different way that the concepts are kind of broken up. And so you can look at your subject matter expertise. I've played around a little bit with Key Trends, which is a tool I believe also out of Spain. They have been looking at how do they connect all of those different entities as well. And how do you write more about those specific entities if you know they tend to rank better? So I've been really enjoying that. The other thing that I would just note is you can actually just use a regular tool as well, just to look at what stories are showing up regularly that may not be what you think are search stories. And it takes a little bit more of a search instinct versus a tool. But if you were to, for example, look at Semrush and you see the top 5 stories for the week or the month were typical regular ones that you would expect to do well in news, but then there's this one random story that you had pegged as not a search story and it did really, really well on search. There's probably a reason for that and it's likely because of Discover. So you can start doing your own manual research of this story did really well this week, maybe this story did really well this week, maybe. cross-reference it with Google Search Console and just how does it show up in terms of like, what are the entities?

I just wanted to highlight something, the Key Trends tool, by the way, I know Dani Pinillos is your friend here in Spain. So I would like to highlight this tool because I have been able to try the tool and I think it's particularly insightful to identify trendy topics and opportunities that you might be leaving out because it's not the usual topic or Or focus, let's say, of the usual SEO tool that can work really well for publications. And then there's this other tool, Marfeel, which is also Spanish. And this particular tool also integrates and can segment well the information and insights that they provide from search, social, even dark social, and Discover too. So Marfeel with double E, take a look at it in case you haven't too, because it can provide extra insights too.

I was just gonna make the very obvious point that like the other thing that Shelby has mentioned about search instinct of like you just also want to understand and develop your own sense of what you like and what you are enticed by in Google Discover. So I'd also say like just use the tool. Like one of the best things to do is like make sure that you, you know, like as a news SEO, like making sure that you're using searches the way that you think that readers might be and like looking at the environment to see what is and isn't ranking. Like Not just like your job isn't done as an SEO when the content is out. Your job is also just like looking to see how it shows up in search, how people arrive to that content. So I'd also just say like looking at Google Discover every single day to see if your content is showing up, to see what is doing well from other publishers, specifically your competitors, to see like, you know, if you can sometimes look at Google Discover and say, oh, I had that same story. Or we had that same story. We had that same guide or roundup or whatever, and it didn't show up in Google Discover, in my Google Discover, obviously. And then you can sort of do that little analysis or that little audit of other people's work and see what are the things that I can pick up as maybe reasons why this showed up in Discover, whereas my content didn't. So like just using the tool is also like a really great tool.

That is really a great tip. I don't know if you have any particular insights regarding media. I know that Google, even in their own best practices for Discover, they mentioned large images. If you use them, make them at least 1,200 pixels wide and enable the max image preview large meta robots setting. Is there anything else regarding videos? I don't know if you have identified, I have seen myself as a user, more videos recommended. Most of these videos that I have seen at least are coming from YouTube. Surprise, surprise.

Lily Rae actually pointed this out a couple of weeks ago, but I've noticed a lot more short films or short videos popping up on Google Discover and just Google in general. But on Discover especially because we know this, but our attention spans are so small that we want, you know, a 30-second bit and then we want to move on. Right. So I've been noticing a lot of these like shorter videos coming up. Up on my Discover, some of these like small carousels, those I think are hard to optimize for in the sense of like general SEO. But again, back to those like authorship and EEAT signals, like thinking about how you're relating your content, thinking about who's creating the content. Lily gave this really great tip when we interviewed her a couple months ago about, you know, if you have a video, do you also have a text-related version and vice versa? And how are those connected both on your site? But also on those off-platform surfaces like YouTube to make sure that they're showing up regardless. I do think that as we know, there's an emphasis on visuals and video, but also just these images that are unique. We have a tendency to obviously have all of these, you know, Getty Images and all of these areas that you can find stock photos and people tend to use the same ones. So original art tends to do really, really well. You know, The Athletic, for example, we create graphics for some of our bigger stories and I see that those tend to do better. In Discover. And so I think that it's really coming down to that originality, but also keeping clear focus and trying to keep attention as much as possible, which is so hard.

To start wrapping up, I would like to ask you for a last tip, something that you think that you haven't mentioned yet and might be useful for the audience to learn about or to take into account when optimizing for Discover. In my case, I have to just say it's like start using it as a user. You can discover a lot of patterns. So in my case, it's funny because I switch a lot back and forth between English and Spanish. And many, many times, it's funny how they recommend me articles for British expats, which there's a big community here in the south of Spain, especially. So a lot of the news that they recommend me or guides are about, this is your guide as a British expat to do X or Y in Spain, because they see me consuming content in English and pretty much they geolocate me in Spain, right? So they recommend me that information. So here is where we can really take into account the demographics and the different personas that we're targeting our content to. Think of the different angles that we can tackle a particular topic too.

EEAT plus topic authority multiplied by some buzzwords, buzziness. I just looked at my Google Discover this morning and I saw a headline that was The 10 books for Taylor Swift's 10 Eras Tour, which is like a perfect example, I think, of like EAT. And it's from Literary Hubs, the site that does lots of books coverage. And that's a great example because like their topic authority obviously is books. Their EAT is around book and book reviews. But what they've done is like take those 2 things plus a little bit of buzzworthiness and serve me a piece of content that I'm absolutely gonna click on about a book recommendation for each of Taylor Swift's 10 Eras Tour. So it's leveraging that little bit of buzzworthiness around her current tour and then taking it, building off of their existing topic authority and E-A-T, which is like probably what I would think about most if I'm trying to do better in Google Discover is how do I take what I'm already good at and figure out how to, you know, find the pulse of what people are interested in on Discover?

Yeah. And it's all about knowing your audience. Like we said it from the top, don't, you know, put a strategy directly toward Google Discover. Don't spend time on Google Discover like as a pillar of your big whole strategy because it is so volatile, but it is truly about just knowing your audience and providing them what the value is. In news especially, a lot of that is what is the news, but how do you supplement the news? How do you make context? How do you allow them to live their lives better? And that's what tends to do better on Discover, or at least shows up on Discover. So really just understanding what your audience likes from you, what they appreciate, what they read, What they spend time on. Engaged time is a big one too. And just again, thinking about all those signals that Jesse mentioned earlier about EEAT, topic authority, and really leaning in to what you do well.

Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you very much for all the insights, the ideas. I really appreciated the tips. I know that the audience will love it too. And hopefully after this, they will be able to start testing around, playing around, and improving further. their informational content for Google Discover indeed. So if you liked today's episode, remember to like the video, of course, and subscribe to the channel in case you haven't. If you want to also learn more about everything regarding SEO for publications, you can also subscribe to Shelby and Jesse What the Fuck SEO newsletter, which is fantastic, by the way. And of course, if you want to keep up with SEO in general, you can subscribe to seofomo.co, which is My own newsletter. Thank you for watching today's episode. Thank you very much again, Jesse and Shelby. Bye bye.