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How to make sure your content is found by Google Discover

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How to optimize your content for Google Discover

How to optimize your content for Google Discover

Google wants you to stop searching. It wants to search high quality content for you and then fill your feed with it. If there ever was a need to create high-quality engaging content, it is now. You need to optimize your content for Google Discover.

What exactly is Google Discover and why do you need to optimize your content for it?

Google Discover is a replacement for Google Feed that you often come across when you use the Google search bar on your mobile phone, especially Google Now. Of course, there might be many Android-based phones that may not have Google Now pre-installed, but in most of the cases, your phone, or the phone of your customer or client, may be equipped with Google Now.

Since Google Discover isn’t being sent out to all the phones yet, you may still be using Google Feed. The updates on Google Feed are obtained from your search pattern and browsing history. As you know, Google tracks every activity of yours (yes, it is creepy) on the pretext that it wants to give you the content you’re looking for even when you don’t know how to find the right content.

Google is constantly tracking you

Google is constantly tracking you

What is the difference between any other newsfeed, for example, Facebook Stories or even Flipboard, and Google Discover?

The first difference is, Google is after all, Google, and it is present in almost every non-iOS device. Hence, its feeds are automatically there on your mobile phone and unless you are hell bent on not using them, you will end up using them. Besides, Google claims that over 800 million users are using Google Feed regularly. The moment Google Discover arrives on their mobile phones, they will automatically start using it.

The second reason is, there is nothing negative about using Google Feeds. At one single place, it gives you all the information you need to organise yourself, even your flight updates if the information exists in your email. These are called “cards” and it gives you important updates on news, sports and entertainment.

Google constantly updates your feeds according to your search history.

Then it upgraded its feeds algorithm and started anticipating what you would like to read or watch.

Google Discover wants to predict what you want to find

Google Discover wants to predict what you want to find

It no longer wanted to depend on your search pattern or browsing pattern. It now aspired to predict what you’re going to like before you even knew it. Google Discover is a highly advanced version of its older Google Feeds Avtar.

The basic point is, if people come across your content without having to search for it, they may not search for it. This also means that if they are able to find your competitor’s content, there will be no need for them to search for your content. This way, they may never search for your content.

Using artificial intelligence, Google wants you to stop searching and start discovering.

For people to be able to “discover” your content, you need to convince Google that your content is worth discovering.

People who have used Google Discover say that there have been many design changes. There is a clickable topic header above every news item or update. If you tap on that topic header, feeds specific to that topic are displayed and Google takes note of your preference. At the bottom of the card, you will be able to indicate whether you would like to see more of such updates or less.

Topic header in Google Discover

Topic header in Google Discover

Google Feed was previously accessible only through the Google Mobile app but now, once the Discover feed is introduced, it will be available in all Google.com mobile browsers including the “OK Google” thing.

Optimizing your content for Google Discover

Interestingly, this shift towards discovering rather than searching is in the sudden shift. Google has been modifying its content discovering capabilities for many years now and this is why a lot of stress is put on creating high-quality engaging content.

Optimizing your content for Google Discover is like sowing a tree. To eat fruit you need the tree, and there is no escaping from it, but you cannot get the fruit immediately. You will first need to plot a sampling or sow a seed. In this case, you will need to encourage your prospective customer or client to interact with your content, to engage with it, and only then Google Discover will deem it fit to keep on discovering it even when your prospective customer or client isn’t actively searching for it.

This Search Engine Land blog post has some useful tips on how to optimize your content for Google Discovery and make it more discoverable.

The first thing you need to understand while optimizing your content for Google Discovery is that it is all about the experience. What sort of experience people have with your content and how they’re going to interact with it? Are they going to be passive towards your content or they are going to share it with their friends and colleagues, share with their own timelines, link to it, spend more time going through it or even bookmark it? All these actions tell Google that people find your content valuable.

Importance of understanding user intent for content writing

Importance of understanding user intent for content writing

In my blog post The importance of understanding user intent in content writing, I have written about how important it is to understand what your user/searcher is looking for and whether you are providing it or not. User intent means if someone finds your content on Google, goes to your link, stays there, and then doesn’t come back to Google to carry on the exact same search, it means the searcher found on your link what he or she was looking for and now there is no need to look for the exact thing.

There is also an attribute called the Search Task Accomplishment Factor about which I have written in this Huffington Post blog post, which talks about the same thing – does the search get over one’s someone visits your link or not? If the search gets over, it means you are providing exactly what the searcher is looking for, for that exact keyword. Your rankings improve.

Factors like these are going to have a big impact when you optimize your content for Google Discovery.

The above-linked Search Engine Land blog post suggests that you take care of the following when optimizing your content for Google Discovery:

Create quality content people like to engage with

Google Discover is going to function the same way your typical Facebook Timeline functions. The updates that you see are the ones that are either similar to the updates you have interacted with before, or, are similar to updates your friends are interested in. In one way or another, it is the engagement that decides what you see on your timeline.

The same is going to happen with Google Discover.

Now, why would people interact with your content, why would they engage with it, if they don’t find your content useful, interesting, high-quality or engaging?

Proactively showcase and highlight your content

Millions of web pages, images, videos and blog posts are being published every day. People can interact with your content only if they can find it. If you are well known, they themselves look for your content. If you’re not, you will need to take measures so that they take note of your content and start interacting with it. This will entail

  • Promoting your content using your social media profiles.
  • Giving incentive to people to interact with your content and engage with it.
  • Making your content discoverable.
  • Using recommended SEO guidelines so that those who search for your content can find it.
  • Using your mailing list to disseminate your content.

Use images and videos to optimize your content for Google Discover

It is already recommended that you use high quality graphics and images, on your blog posts and web pages. Google Discover will highlight important content through images and videos that are present in the same piece of content. Images and videos draw attention of people easily compared to text, this is why Google Discover is going to put more stress on your images and videos.

Publish new as well as evergreen content

Don’t rest on your laurels once you have published great content on your website or blog. You want people to keep coming back to your website for more great stuff. If you give them an indication that you have given your best and now there is nothing new to expect, they will lose interest in your website. Even Google crawlers will stop crawlingg your website or blog if your pattern becomes haphazard or rare.

Evergreen content means content people would like to bookmark, to save, to refer back to it whenever they need to recall the great information contained within that piece of content. This is also important. People would love to link to this content and when they link to this content, Google will think that this content is important and will showcase it in the Google Discover feeds.

Concluding remarks on content optimization for Google Discover

So, is active searching history? Personally, I don’t think so but I’m not a farsighted person when it comes to predicting technology and even content marketing trends. Maybe something is there that I cannot see, but, presently, I don’t think active searching is going away. This is why, every content aggregation service gives you a search bar. There is no “discovery”, “story” or “feed” service or app that does not come with a search box or a search bar. Why is it so? Because there is always a possibility of the artificial intelligence not discovering what you want.

But yes, passive browsing is here. All social networking and social media apps thrive and survive on our proclivity to browse passively. How many times do you post on Facebook or Twitter? Most of the time you are just scrolling up and down, viewing what other people have posted. These posts and updates don’t even appear chronologically. Some algorithm somewhere is deciding what you should see, and then you see it. So yes, we are already tuned to browsing passively and content being discovered for us.

Maybe, someday it will be a full circle and things will be back to the way they were on TV and radio, but more targeted and narrowed down.

What are topic clusters and pillar pages and how they improve your SEO?

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What are topic clusters and pillar pages

Neil Patel has published a nice blog post on the concept of creating pillar pages, improving their SEO and in the process improving the overall SEO of your website.

In the beginning of the blog post he has also referred to an older Hubspot post that explains in detail how they have been able to help one of their clients improve their search engine ranking for their chosen keyword through a pillar page in particular and topic clusters in general. I had come across this Hubspot blog post a couple of months ago and had been wanting to write about it but somehow, lost the thread while trying to handle other topics on my blog and website.

The Hubspot blog post explains why creating topic clusters are important due to the way people use search queries these days.

Content marketers and search engine optimization experts believe that, due to the complexity and quantity of content available on the web, search engine users don’t use single-word queries. An average query these days consists of 4-5 words.

One reason is, as mentioned above, there is plenty of useless content available on the web and hence, users want to make sure that they give the search engine as much information as possible to zero-in on the right search results.

After all, as this blog post suggests, if you run a query on Google, you may come across billions of search results. But frankly, not many people go beyond the second or the third search results page unless he or she is doing some really important research and there is no other option but to scour through as many search results as possible.

The point is, if you are competing with “billions of search results”, you need to do something exceptional, something that is not possible for most of the people to achieve, to move your rankings to the first page or at least the second page.

The second reason is that more and more people are using voice to search, mostly on their mobile phones. So, when people speak into their mobile phones, they mostly use phrases, day-to-day expressions, to carry out the search instead of single keywords. Something like, “find the best barber near me” or “where is the nearest eating joint selling vegan food”.

I have written multiple times on my blog that writing to improve your SEO is just one aspect of content publishing and content writing. The other aspect is, writing for your ideal persona. The search engines will be ranking your content, but it will be the human beings who will be reading it and then basing their decisions on how they react to your content.

Creating and maintaining topic clusters allows you to gather relevant and interrelated bits of information around a single source and hence, increase the subject-authority of your website or blog.

What are topic clusters?

A cluster means, a sort of a grouping. It’s coming together of different components of an environment or a topic. The same applies to topic clusters.

Topic cluster and pillar page explained

Google is constantly looking for authoritative, specialized content. It wants its users to be able to find as much information as possible through a single source, through a single link. For this, Google wants to showcase authority content.

How does it know that you have “authoritative, specialized” content?

One way of finding that out is, of course when your content is being referred to and responded to by lots of people on the Internet in general and social networking websites in particular.

But when it comes to on-site SEO, it means having lots of good quality content around your chosen topic.

Let’s take an example of my website. Suppose I want to increase my search engine rankings for the keyword or key phrase “SEO content writing services“.

The normal route would be creating lots of web pages and blog posts on my website including the search term “SEO content writing services” – I’m still using this method and I need to explore the concept of creating topic clusters more. I will share my progress on this later.

So, I will create lots of blog posts and articles talking about the various aspects of SEO content writing including

  • What is SEO content writing
  • Why SEO content writing is important
  • SEO content writing doesn’t mean low quality content
  • How to write SEO content
  • How to target different markets with SEO content
  • How does Google deal with your SEO content
  • What type of SEO content writing services I provide
  • How I can help you improve your SEO with my content
  • What is my SEO content writing methodology
  • How much I charge for my SEO content writing services

The list can go on and on.

The problem with the traditional method is that all the blog posts, articles and web pages that you create around your chosen keyword or search term are isolated and scattered. They’re not connected with each other. They’re not part of a cluster. The search engines will crawl them and index them as separate entities.

This sort of content arrangement gets lost in all the hubbub that fills up the Internet.

This sort of content management worked previously because there wasn’t lots of content on the Internet and not many businesses were using content marketing to promote their businesses. Now that content marketing has gone mainstream every business and individual want to use it and hence, your content authority needs to stand out. This you can achieve by creating content clusters, or topic clusters.

The important components of a topic cluster are

  • The web page containing an introduction to the main topic, in my case that would be “SEO content writing services”
  • A cluster of blog posts and webpages – on my website as well as on other websites like Medium, Quora and LinkedIn – that lead to the main web page and to each other

Hence, it becomes a cluster.

What is a pillar page?

A pillar page is the main web page to which every other web page, blog post and article links. This is the web page or blog post you want to optimize.

As explained above in the topic cluster section, pillar page exists at the center of your topic cluster. It is the main topic you want to cover. Everything else links to it and it links to everything else. It becomes an Oracle of knowledge about the topic or the search term.

How does creating topic clusters and pillar pages improve your search engine rankings?

Search engines like Google are constantly looking for authority content. They want to provide high-quality information to search engine users.

Since search is becoming very complex Google prefers sources that are packed with very useful and relevant information.

The information doesn’t just have to be useful and relevant, it also needs to be arranged in such a manner that it is easier to consume and understand.

Modular information is easier to consume and understand.

When you create topic clusters you create lots of content pieces and then join them around your pillar page. Your pillar page becomes a sort of a hub for all the information relevant to that particular topic.

Creating topic clusters solves two purposes:

  • It makes you write/create/gather lots of information around a single topic covering every possible subtopic
  • It makes it easier for users to navigate through the entire spectrum of the topic through hyperlinks

This further boosts your SEO.

Since all the pages and blog posts are interconnected, even if a single link gets an SEO boost it has a trickle-down effect on all the connected links.

Also, since lots of web pages, blog posts and articles – on your website and outside of your website – are connecting to your pillar page, Google begins to think that it is a very important page about your chosen topic and hence, begins to improve its search engine rankings.

How content marketing actually improves your SEO

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content marketing improves SEO

Content marketing and SEO are intertwined these days.

Ever since Google released the Panda and Penguin updates people have come to understand that SEO doesn’t just mean using the right keywords while writing content.

Although keywords are important, they are not the sole factors in determining your search engine rankings, the way they used to be 10 odd years ago.

Somewhere along, Google realized that it had to crowdsource its ranking algorithms. Merely depending on the machines was open to exploitation.

Hence, social validation and acceptance of your content became as important as the way you used the keywords.

These days, your search engine rankings depend on

  • The overall quality of your content
  • The ease of reading
  • The number of people sharing your content on social media and social networking websites
  • The number of people linking to your website or individual links
  • The relevance of your content
  • The bounce rate on your website or blog
  • The number of times you update and refresh your content

Although Google (and other major search engines) don’t let people know how actually the search engine ranking algorithms work, the above-mentioned attributes of your content can ensure an improved SEO.

As you can see, a big part of your search engine rankings depends on how people perceive your content.

Google has incorporated these attributes because even if you can use black hat SEO tactics to trick the machines, it is practically impossible to trick humans.

Therefore, SEO these days depends a lot on content marketing.

Why SEO and content marketing are interconnected

The basic nature of content marketing is, publishing high-quality content and then making sure that people who need to access that content, can easily access it.

Read Can content marketing improve your SEO?

Once you have published high-quality content and made it easy for people to access it, since people these days love to share content on social media and social networking websites, they start sharing your content too.

The beauty of this is, they won’t share your content if they don’t find it useful.

If they don’t like your content, your content will not earn social validation.

You may find it nagging that you always have to publish and then distribute high-quality content for better SEO, but look at it logically…very few business owners can publish content that can earn social validation.

If you can improve your SEO with better content marketing, it creates a level-playing field for everyone.

People cannot force their way into better search engine rankings simply because they can spend more money.

SEO these days is not about quantity.

It’s about quality.

And quality comes with knowledge, wisdom, experience, and a strong desire to keep your prospective customers informed and educated.

Well-executed content marketing automatically improves your search engine rankings.

As mentioned above, content marketing can succeed only when you publish valuable content, content that people appreciate.

When you focus on your core topic, you are naturally creating content around your keywords.

Content marketing means providing compelling content on an ongoing basis.

The more you refine your content marketing the better focused you are when publishing useful content.

Being better focused means, focusing on the right questions and the right answers.

Content marketing also means making your content available on all possible distribution channels, which means more people can access your content.

When people can access your content there is a greater possibility of them sharing your content and linking to it from their own websites and blogs.

So, all the steps that you follow to execute a good content marketing strategy, are also the steps needed to improve your SEO.

Better SEO means publishing relevant content in as friendly a manner as possible.

Better SEO also means a greater number of people responding to your content and linking to it.

Consequently, better content marketing means improved SEO.

Should you always be writing optimized content to improve SEO?

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dont-let-you-need-to-always-optimize-stop-you-from-writing

You publish content on your website or blog for a reason, right?

Out of scores of reasons, one of the biggest reasons why people want to publish content regularly on their websites and blogs is to improve their SEO.

Many SEO experts and content marketers suggest that never publish a piece of content without optimizing it for search engines.

Here, I’m assuming that when they say “optimizing” they don’t mean needlessly stuffing your blog posts and web pages with keywords.

What they mean to say is, make sure that you publish something, you target your effort in such a manner, that it helps to improve your SEO.

There are some great tools available that can help you search-engine-optimize your content.

For example, if you manage your website and blog with WordPress, you may be using one of the SEO plug-ins. I use SEOPressor. People also use Yoast SEO and All-In-One-SEO.

They are great tools to help you publish posts that are optimized for your chosen keywords.

A great thing that I like about SEOPressor is that it helps you see if you are over-optimizing your content.

Since I don’t intentionally overuse my keywords, when I use them, it is unintentional.

Sometimes, just in the flow, I tend to use the same expression again and again, mostly to sound lyrical.

This optimizes my content and consequently, my SEO suffers.

SEOPressor tells me when I have used the keywords more times than necessary.

But this small post is not about optimizing or over-optimizing for better SEO; this post is about not getting bogged down by the fact that you have to optimize every web page and blog post just because you have got tools with you that help you optimize.

For example, the SEOPressor tells you whether the web page on the blog post you are working on is well-optimized or not. If it is well optimized, you see this nice green response:

SEOPressor screenshot

The problem here is (it has nothing to do with SEOPressor) that sometimes one tends to get psychologically bogged down by the fact that, that icon has to turn green. The entire focus is shifted on optimizing the web page instead of delivering the message.

Optimization is needed.

If you want to draw targeted traffic from search engines, there is no other option but to optimize your individual web pages and blog posts.

But you don’t need to obsess. You shouldn’t let your need to optimize every possible web page and blog post stop you from expressing yourself.

Optimize when you really want to, need to, optimize, but otherwise, let yourself be free.

Don’t dilute your content by writing about everything under the sun – stick to your core competency (in my case it is content writing and content marketing) – but sometimes if you don’t want to pay attention to the optimization aspect, don’t.

You don’t always have to write more than 1500 words.

You don’t always have to use your keywords within the first 100 words in the last paragraph.

No need to always worry about keyword density.

No need to worry about an optimized title.

Just write and publish.

This is very important for you as a professional and a professional who promotes himself or herself through his or her writing.

Your writing begins to get stunted when you focus more on optimization and less on your core message.

Again, yes, optimization is necessary and unavoidable but keep it a mix of free flow and optimized content.

Let it be like, in every 10 web pages and blog posts, don’t bother for optimization for 2-3.

Remember that what is important is that you publish regularly.

Don’t feel discouraged that right now you cannot come up with a completely optimized web page or blog post.

Publishing something is always better than publishing nothing.

How to boost your content with these 5 SEO tactics

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5 SEO tactics to boost your content

Search engine traffic is very important for your business.

But search engine traffic doesn’t just come your way simply because your website or blog exists.

You need to provide quality content to search engines like Google, constantly. The search engines are hungry for fresh and high-quality content.

The problem is, it isn’t just the quality of your content that boosts your SEO (although the quality is fundamental): you need to apply some tactics to make it easier for search engines to crawl, index and rank your website links for the appropriate keywords.

You need to keep it in mind that it’s the algorithms that are deciding which link to rank, and how. These algorithms go through various facts like

  • what keywords you have used
  • how you have formatted the information
  • what is the quality of your writing
  • and most importantly, how people react to your content.

You may like to read how Google actually ranks your content.

Most of the content marketers tell you that you needn’t worry about your search engine rankings as long as you are publishing great content.

Although this is theoretically correct and it may even happen in the future, right now, you have to take care of a few things to make sure that your content is indexed and then correctly ranked.

I have listed below 5 SEO tactics that can help you boost your content on search engines.

Boosting content with SEO tactics

1. Focus on problems and solutions

People are normally looking for solutions to their problems on Google and other search engines.

For example, if I think that my content isn’t performing well, I may be looking for a content writer.

If conventional advertising isn’t working for my business, I may be looking for alternative ways to promote myself.

If I have a back pain, I would like to know how to cure my pain using home remedies or natural ways.

I might be looking for good schools in the new neighborhood I plan to move to with my family.

I may want to know what were the best songs in the 70s.

Web pages and blog posts that address the “how”, “where”, “why”, “when” and “what” of different situations fare well on search engines.

2. Do your keyword research before writing content

If you want to boost your content on search engines, then you need to take your keywords very seriously.

“Keywords” in SEO context means all those search expressions people may use to find what you offer.

For example, people who are looking for a content writer may like to look for “content writing services” or “small business content writing services”.

So, these are the keywords I should be focusing on when writing content for my website and my blog.

People also look for longer keywords, for example, “looking for content writer to improve my SEO”.

Similarly, if you sell handmade bags from your website some people may try to find you using “handmade bags” or “handmade bags as Christmas presents” or “medium-sized handmade bags”, and such.

Selecting the targeted keywords is a whole different branch of study and there are actually specialist people and tools that can help you find the right keywords.

Why is it important to do keyword research before writing content?

It’s because the keywords should be an integral part of your content writing process. They shouldn’t be an afterthought.

Also, a pre-compiled list of your important keywords keeps you focused. It constantly reminds you what content you need to write and create.

3. Use your keywords in the title of your web page or blog post

Your title is one of the most important parts of your web page or blog post. I charge extra for coming up with well-sounding SEO titles.

Whereas the complete body of your content exists on your website or blog, when it appears on other sources like search engines, social media and social networking websites, and on the websites and blogs of those who want to link to you, it’s your web page or blog post title that is used.

On the search engine results pages it is your title that appears as the primary hyperlink.

It has been observed that people click those links more that contain the search term or the keyword they have just used.

Perhaps, this is the reason why Google looks for the keywords in your title and a big part of your SEO is affected by the presence or absence of your keywords there.

4. Write shareable content

The benefit of writing shareable content is that it spreads fast. It is shared more on social media and social networking websites.

It is repurposed more.

More Webmasters and bloggers link to content that they think shareworthy.

Why create shareable content?

Google takes into account the way people react to your content.

How many people are linking back to your content?

How many people are reacting to your content in terms of responding to it and sharing it from their social media and social networking profiles?

How much time do people spend reading your content?

Useful content is shareable content. Content that contains lots of information that can be immediately implemented to improve something is quite useful.

List articles, popularly called as “listicles”, enjoy a greater possibility of being shared because they contain the exact number of steps, solutions or resources. People know what they are sharing.

How do you know what is shareable?

You can check out Google Trends to know what is trending and create topics around trending topics.

You can compile a list of solutions to a problem: 10 ways you can improve your SEO in just a week.

Make your title as compelling as possible and then pack as much information as possible.

5. Remain focused to your core subject

Don’t dilute the focus of your website or blog by writing about random topics.

If you provide legal services, then your content should talk about your legal services and how you can help people with your knowledge of the law.

If you are into carpentry, then talk about carpentry: the various tools you use, the qualities of woods you use, and the sort of work you have undertaken.

Staying focused on your core subject will help you create a repository of useful information on your topic. This tells Google that you are an expert and hence you publish authoritative content.

Authoritative content is ranked higher compared to general content.

Aside from these 5 tactics to boost your SEO you should also

  • Write longer blog posts and web pages (Google and other search engines prefer longer text to shorter text).
  • Use images wherever necessary. Try to use an image after every 300 words.
  • Link to other blog posts and web pages from other blog posts and web pages.
  • Make sure you use your keywords within the first 100 words of your web page and then in the last para.
  • Use your keywords every 100-200 words, but not unnecessarily.
  • Use shorter sentences. It makes it easier for search engine algorithms to make sense of your content.

Read 10 fundamental qualities of effective SEO content writing.

What are SEO tactics?

I normally don’t prefer to use the expression “tactics” in terms of SEO and content marketing, but since many people use it, I’m using it just to make a point.

The most important on-site SEO tactic to boost your content is, making it easier for the search engine crawlers to access your content, make sense of it, and then rank it.

For off-site SEO, try to spread your content as much as possible.

Share your content links on social media and social networking websites.

Repurpose your existing content using different formats – YouTube videos, GIFs, PDFs, infographics and slides – and then upload these to the appropriate platforms.

Encourage people to link back to your content to earn social validation.

Why I don’t call these tactics is because this is an ongoing process. You may call it, a way of life.

You need to create high-quality content otherwise it is not appreciated by your target audience.

You need to strategically distribute and disseminate your content because there is too much of it on the Internet and it is difficult for people to pay attention to a particular piece of content.

Become an information hub, and be known for the quality of your content.

Whether you call these tactics or an ongoing process, there is 100% guarantee that you can boost your content with these SEO practices.