How to Optimize for Google Discover

If you have these questions, I’m here to help you.

Today, I’m gonna go over the Google Discover Optimization.

Here are the topics:

• What is Google Discover
• How to see the news feed?
• How much impact can I get?
• How to optimize for Google Discover Hit
• How to track the traffic and the conversions

Fyi, I’ve been working for an e-commerce website and we got a good amount of traffic every time we posted the news articles.

It works well if you are working for a big brand or well-known company.

What is Google Discover?

Google Discover is a personalized news feed from Google.

We can see it from our smartphone with Google App and the chrome browser.

You might be interested if you are working for a website to increase the traffic because it brings a good amount of traffic when your article gets pick up by Google Discover.

How to see the Google Discover Feed

If you have an android phone, it should available by default. Just swipe left or right from your home screen.

If you have an iPhone, you can see it by installing Google App, or by Google Chrome browser app.

Froth the Chrome browser, you can see the news feed when you open the new window.

How Much Traffic Can You Get from Google Discover Hit?

To answer this question, it really depends on how long the article stays on the news feed.

Traffic

In my experience, I usually get 1000 ~ 5000 clicks for Traffics

Sometimes I get a big hit like 30,000clicks.

That was when we published our news article about a promotion.

Conversions

The conversion rate from Google Discover is generally very low.

This is because the visitors from Google Discover don’t seem to have purchase intention.

I would suggest getting more light engagement, for example, sign up for email, social media follows, etc so that the users can come back and purchase the product when they are ready.

How to Optimize for Google Discover

There are a few techniques, tips to get hit by Google Discover.

1. Drive Traffic by Social Media and Email after publishing

The 1st tip is to promote the article by social media or Email to get traffic after publishing the article

Google will pick up the article after they catch the buzz from the published article.

It means you need this instant traffic to your article right after publishing it.

2. Image Guideline

The 2nd tip is to follow the image guideline from Google.

There are only 2 conditions that I follow;

• The featured image should have more than 1200px width.
• Use high quality and original image

3. Follow Google’s guideline for the content policy

It would be fine if you work for the corporate website with the legal department.

4. Index the article on Google Search Console

Send the URL index request on Google after publishing the article.

5. News Article is easier to get hit

Based on my experience, 90% of the website pages which got hit by Google were news article types of contents.

Now, our news article can get hit almost 100% every time I publish the new post.

How to Convert the Traffic into Sales

2 Step Approach – First Ask for Social Follow or Email Sign Up

There is one thing to keep in mind that the traffic from Google Discover doesn’t conversions into sales immediately in general.

The reason is that people who see the news from Google Discover tend not to look for a product purchase.

For example, have you purchased a product when you last time read the news from News Feed App?

As for me, I have never bought something after reading a news.

The simple solution is to change the goal from product purchase to Email sign up or social follows.

Limited Time Offer

As you might know it already but limited time offer sometimes work with the audience at their discovery phase on their journey.

What you can do here is emphasize the period of time in the article, or even in the meta title.

Track the Conversion Data on Google Analytics

Lastly track the performance and keep improving.

Please read the paragraph below to check out how to see the data on Google Analytics Report.

How to Track the Performance

There are 2 ways to track the performance from Google Discove Hit.

1st is to see the impressions, clicks and the CTRs from Google Search Console

2nd is to see the traffic data from Google Analytics report.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is offering accurate data for impressions, clicks, and the CTRs.

The navigation will appear after you get hit by Google Discover several times.

Ref Performance report (Discover) | Search Console Help

Google Analytics Report

For the traffic from the Chrome app, it goes into the referral traffic. “The referral source is googleapis.com/referral”.

For the traffic from the Google app, it goes into “direct” traffic. However, the channel “direct” includes some other sources for example bookmark, etc so it might not be accurate.

It’s a little bit tricky to see the traffic data on Google Analytics, but the conversion data is only available on Google Analytics.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading the article. Google Slide version is available with the link below.

» Google Discover Optimization | Google Slide

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