Has your small business seen success in Google Discover? Discover has a high click-through-rate and can drive a substantial amount of traffic. The first time you see real traffic results from Discover, you’ll want to replicate it again and again.
Here we share what we’ve seen work well for small businesses and look at how to get Google Discover traffic.
What is Google Discover?
From an end user perspective, Google Discover is a feed curated by Google on mobile devices to deliver articles and videos. Google personalizes the content through searches and related stories. Users can further customize what they see in their Discover feed by following certain topics. The results in Discover change regularly based on changes in user interests or newly published content.
From a content creator’s perspective, Google Discover can be a powerful driver of traffic to a website.
Where do you see the data?
Sign into Google Search Console. If your website has reached a minimum threshold of impressions in Discover, then you will see a section labeled Performance showing reports for both Search Results and Discover. If your Performance section is still listed under Overview, then you need to continue working on high-quality content creation to compete in Discover.
When you select the Discover Performance report, you’ll see it looks similar to the Search Results report showing Total Clicks, Total Impressions, and Average CTR. Google also provides a list of the pages that surfaced in Discover.
How can you optimize for Google Discover?
Google says “there is no way to create content that explicitly targets Discover's interest matching,” and that you should consider any Discover traffic supplemental to your Search traffic. But again, after you get a taste of Discover traffic you’ll want more.
Is there such a thing as Google Discover SEO? Can you do anything to get more Google Discover traffic? While it may seem like a bit of a crapshoot, Google provides guidelines that offer a glimpse into what really works.
First and foremost, you should already be producing high-quality content following SEO best practices.
“Our automated systems surface content in Discover from sites that have many individual pages that demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T). Those looking to improve E-A-T can consider some of the same questions we encourage site owners to consider for Search. While Search and Discover are different, the overall principles for E-A-T as it applies to content within them are similar.”
When following SEO best practices, even small blogs can garner attention in Discover (see below for an example). We recommend SMBs hone in on this Google advice for getting Discover traffic:
“Having content that’s timely for current interests, tells a story well, or provides unique insights.”
A common denominator in the content we’ve seen perform well: unique, in-depth insights. The posts were written on topics that the writers were very familiar with and felt authentically passionate about. Telling good stories and providing new points of view are areas where small businesses and blogs can compete.
Of interest: Google says to include compelling images in your content, but we’ve seen one URL perform very well in Discover that did not contain any images or videos in the content itself. It was a long-form opinion-style piece on a topic unrelated to the news cycle.
How long does Discover traffic last?
There’s no telling. In our experience, when a piece of content sees a large spike in traffic, Google Discover may surface the content for a few weeks then stop. The same post may continue to surface, but not to the same degree as that initial push. So enjoy the high while it lasts.
And many pages surface for just a few days, which lines up with a study published by Search Engine Land.
Below are Google Discover and Search Results Reports from a small niche blog we manage. This site is new with no domain authority or backlinks. You can see from the upward trajectory of search traffic that the blog is updated regularly. The site’s early success in Google Discover points to the importance of following SEO best practices.
The Discover traffic below represents about 10k visitors while the Search traffic was 20k over the same time period — showing how impactful Google Discover can be for smaller websites.
Google Discover Report
Google Search Results Report
Reminder: Keep an eye on your Google Search Console, if you see a traffic spike in Discover, double check your content to make sure it is optimized for conversions.
Need help?
Whether you want general feedback on your blog or help with Google Search Console, book an SEO consultation and we will take a look. We also offer a resource on how to hire an SEO expert.
