2/28 WWT: Rebounding from Discover Loss

Hello, good morning, everybody

My name is Zach. Thank you so much for joining Zoics Weekly webinar

Looking forward to another great session with everybody. If someone can just put up their hands or something like that, okay, good

I got a high. I just wanted to make sure everyone can hear me and see me and whatnot

So great. Glad to hear it. So in case you're unfamiliar, I hope everyone would be

Today's topic is going to be about rebounding from Discover loss. So if you're unfamiliar with Discover, maybe this isn't the webinar for you, but that's okay

We can certainly still cover everything. But before we get into everything, just a little bit about myself

I'm Zach. I'm one of the SEO specialists at a Zoic. I work in the San Diego office

obviously the picture I had more hair so a little different than that one

but we look good at that one so that's why I picked it anyways

yeah born and raised here in San Diego and work in the San Diego office so good times

this webinar as I said before we're covering rebounding with Discover Lawson to maximize

the half hour that we have today I'm just going to jump into things but I will be answering questions

towards the end of the webinar. So this is going to be more of a

how should I say, not so much like a question and answer throughout

It'll be question and answer at the very end. So I promise if you ask a question, I will try to get to it at the very end

Depending on our time, and I'll try and get to this as quick as I can. So without further ado, let's get into it

So today's objective, learn why your website may have lost some Discover traffic

and how to work on regaining it. The goals and the reason that I picked this topic for today's webinar was I know so many

different sites have lost Discover traffic. It's a big topic within the SEO community

And the Discover feed has changed a lot in the last six months to a year

And there's reasons for that and we want to go over that. There's also a lot of improvements that you can make that are just clearly aligned with Google's

guidelines to make sure that you are always in the best standing to

rank within that feed. And we also want to make sure that we know the fundamentals of the Discover search

result, essentially, to make sure that you're always meeting Google's expectations because we at least want to get to that

It's kind of like it discovers very similar to Google News. You kind of have to be just right in the right standing

You have to have all the right things to get the shot at being picked. So there is going to be a bit of..

So there is going to be a bit of chance and randomness when it comes to these two different feeds, news and discover

So we want to make sure that you guys are caught up on all of that. And by the end of this, you guys are going to be wizards

Look at you. There's a little diagram of what you will look like after this. Not really

I can't afford robes and hats for everybody here. You can go out and buy your own though

So anyways, if you'd like to learn more about this webinar, you're like, man, I want to watch that again or go to our previous webinars or anything like that

Here's a little guide on how you can do it. You can find it all at support.ozoic in our webinar library

Or you can also go to your publisher dashboard. And then if you don't want that, we usually have a companion blog as well for kind of the written version of the webinar as well

So exciting things. But before we go any further, I got to stop us for a minute

Hold on. As a disclaimer to this webinar and to information concerning the Discover feed

By Google's own admission, the Discover feed is of serendipitous nature. So it's very unreliable in terms of consistently garnering traffic

It's less predictable. It's less dependable versus something like, a keyword-driven search

So this webinar's intention isn't so, okay, I'm going to give you these three things

You're going to go away and everyone's discovered traffic lines up only

Unfortunately, I can't guarantee you that. I can't guarantee I've got the secret formula

I think I've got some great ideas that can help you. But of course, even Google is like, hey, I wouldn't depend on this because it does change a lot

So do your own research, make up your own, you know, your own, you know, well-educated decisions on this

Unfortunately, I can't guarantee you traffic. If I could, I would. All right

Let's get into the first kind of section of this. You may be asking yourself, man, I lost all my Discover traffic a couple of months ago

Where should I even start? I'm so glad you asked. So, like I said, the Discover feed is an extension

of the actual Google search result. So any algorithm changes that happen

can greatly impact the Discover Feed as well. So that being said, I'm sure everyone has in their mind

the beautiful, helpful content update, and all the other Q4 updates that came out within the last six months

in Q4 of last year. So it means that it's very important to keep up to date

and keep understanding why those Google updates happen to search to better understand what's happening to discover

And that also in turn will help you improve in the Discover feed once you better understand these updates

So kind of the first place, so the question of, well, I lost all my traffic, where should I start

The first place that I would actually start is I would research the Q4 updates

and the helpful content updates. Here at a Zoic, we have some great resources

that I would recommend looking into. specifically, at least the one that comes to the top of my mind is actually a webinar I did

Last year and I believe November it was specifically targeting review content However I spent probably half of that webinar specifically speaking about Q4 updates at length

And then there was also a companion blog as well for that, where, again, I go over a lot of

what that Q4 updates were about, what changed. And then also, if you just look back through our webinars, probably for the past couple months

we've spoken a lot about this. So Azoic has a lot of fantastic resources for this

But of course, outside of Azoic, there's a lot of great resources. I would look into Google

I would look into their guidelines of what they came out with and get a good grasp on what is meaningful within those updates to better understand what the landscape of search results looks like right now to have the best formed opinion on where the Discover Feed is at the moment

That's where you should start. But after that, and I thought this was hilarious, this little comic over here, because it's true how to increase your rankings on search engines

It can be very complicated. So the first step is to do some research, make sure you're at a good baseline

I'll definitely be mentioning some things throughout this, but that's the first place to start

However, the first step in kind of yzing what happened with Discover and ultimately rebounding from this is to look at the Discover feed currently and see what you find

I would encourage you guys to actually get on your phones if you have one handy

And if you can, go to the Google app, go to where there is the Discover feed and kind of follow along with this

The first step that if you have the time to do it is to be consistently researching the type of content that you write about, that your website is about

So if you have a plumbing website that you read about plumbing news or not plumbing news

you know, how to plan like how to do plumbing procedures, how you know, you're reviewing

plumbing products, stuff like that. If you had all those things together, right, and you would want your Discover feed to look

a lot like your content so that you can better understand, well, what is Google favoring

You're going to have to kind of train your search results, your Discover feed, to give you

the best results possible. That's going to be your similar type of content

So that way you can better understand, okay, what's Google favoring here

And try and find the trends, the types of website, the type of content, style of content

all the different optimizations. And once you have that kind of filtered through, you'll start seeing what the Discover

results are all about for your style of content. And that's what you're going to want to match

That's what you're going to want to kind of formulate over a couple, probably a couple days

But of course, like I said, grab out your phones, look at the Discover feed, and you're going to want to start looking at what the actual results look like and what Google is providing you

So I have this example here of a Discover result that I had on myself

I do shop at Costco every once in a while. I guess it knows that

And this was actually taken a little bit ago. This was in November. but of course nothing was really changed in the search results since then

But if you notice at the bottom right, there's those three little dots. The three little dots bring up this little tab here, at least on Apple phones

And it's about this source and topic. And it gives you this kind of interesting information if you click into that

And once we're in there, it gives us a lot of information on what's important to Google when it comes to discover

To my understanding, and I could be wrong on this, I personally do not remember the about source and topic kind of section, you know, in years past

So I believe this is kind of a newer feature. And I think this is really cool that Google does this

So again, I would recommend do this on your phones and kind of follow along with some of the results

And you can kind of see what we'll follow along with step two

Identify what's important to Google. When Google willingly gives you some of the information that they're utilizing to promote a product or promote an aspect of search, it's a great idea to pay attention because they usually don't do that

Usually Google's kind of secretive with what they want to rank, what they don't want to rank, et cetera, et cetera

So when they do speak, it's really important to be like, okay, I don't want to dial in

So you can kind of see here in my image and on your phone about the source

Google looked for a description of eating well on a reference site, but couldn't find a good match

So actually, I did find another resource where I clicked on a YouTube video

And it was from the gaming magazine IGN. And you can see there that IGN, it's got its own little description there

And that comes from Wikipedia. So the first thing that we can kind of see, what's important to Google is that there is an overview or description

of what the website is about from a third-party source. So that's the first thing that Google's trying to promote is

where's another reference that makes this person or this website reliable? Where's their trustworthiness

So that's kind of the first thing that it goes over. And then the second thing that you can see is a description of who they are in their own words

If we go back to the, if we go back to the Costco kind of example there

they have eating well, they have a quick description of who they are

and same thing for IGN. They have another thing there. So the second thing that's important to Google

there's a description of who they are usually taken from an About Us page

to describe their reliability, their trustworthiness. In their own words, this is us

This is about our source. This is why we're reliable. The third thing that comes up, if you scroll a little down

is that you have web results about the source. So, again, we're about halfway through my kind of

of what I've identified. Each of these three things is talking about reliability and trust

Each of these things are trying to answer the question of why should we trust you? The search

engine is asking those results What are the factors that make this person trustworthy this website trustworthy Two of them are references and one of them is about on your own site

So not only does this prove the super importance of EAT kind of guidelines, but also the importance

of ensuring that your brand is out there. Your website is relevant to other websites, creative writing news, trust pilot

These are great, those are great backlinks to have. So the third thing is web results about the source, and in this case, creative writing news and

trust pilot essentially backlinks from other authoritative sources. Very authority driven, very important aspects of this kind of about topic

The next thing that we find is I'm speaking about how long the site has been indexed

This one had been more than 10 years, so that's definitely important aspect of it as well

How long has the site been around? Has it only been two months or has it been 20

20 years, definitely an important aspect. And as you guys can see here, the next two kind of things that I noticed is a section

discussing the image and the other one talking about similar topics within the space

which were essentially just similar articles. How many other topics are there writing about this content

So those are the six things that we can kind of pull from what's important to Google

And again, notice the pattern and the trend here, very focused on reliability

and a little bit of creativity. How are you describing your brand or website

And then also about the image. I thought this was really interesting as well. It looks, notice how it says it looks like this may be a recent image

That's pretty cool. So this could be when we get kind of into the recommendations portion

which is just the next one, that obviously will come up. But a lot of this wording and a lot of the things that Google give you in search

results, discover, news, these are great things to look at. because again, it's going to give you kind of the ability to see what is important to Google's

guidelines, what's important to their Discover feed or their search or their news feed, anything

like that. So looking into this information is certainly worth it to kind of get a good idea of what's

important to them. And step three is implement your findings on your website and the content of your website

So before I even, you know, we can honestly just go back to this. These six things, we're kind of already said it

These are the things that you're going to want to implement within your articles and within your site

If we go back to this page here, the first thing that I would do, though, is you want to try and formulate your search result to be very similar to the type of content that you're writing about

So let's go back to the plumbing idea. If you're a plumber, you write about how to repair toilets

This is my review of this specific wrench. You want to kind of start to search a lot of plumbing tools, plumbing reviews

Try and train that Discover feed to give you ideas regarding plumbing

And you want to try and formulate a lot of options within that feed that's very similar to your style of content

What this is going to do is that it's going to fill up your discover feed with your competitors

so that then when you go and do this and you go through this process of, okay, where are people getting

their images where are people getting their references. It's going to give you a good idea of how

to implement this. So don't do step two before you do step one. Step two is just kind of cool to look at

for Costco. But if you're a plumbing website looking at Costco, totally different search intent

totally different Discover. Because again, Discover is only powered by the people's interest

It's very unreliable when it comes to the, it's very dependent on

the user interest, which is very fickle. So you want to make sure you do step one before you do step two

And once you get to step two, you can do step three, implement the finding us on your website

And ask yourself kind of these tough questions, because these really are hard things

Is my site mentioned on a reliable third-party source such as Wikipedia

Have you created a YouTube page? Did you have a great backlink from Trust Pilot

Do you have a great backlink from an authoritative? third party that is giving a description of your website, which essentially, if these two things

are together, have you earned any high quality backlinks later to promote your website? Which another question to ask yourself, how involved are you on social media, depending on your

niche? How involved are you on forums? How involved are you in other places than just your website

Search results, if you're familiar at all with the Q4 updates, have become increasingly more competitive

for the majority of search results. The same is true for Discover

Big brands, forums, big publishers. These are the people that you're competing against now

There's a lot less space for niche publishers to earn a lot of these top spots

at the current moment of Google's algorithm. So you have to be very creative

You have to be very authoritative and you have to kind of do what you got to do

There's a lot of competition out there. So these questions are really good things to ask yourself, and although they may take some hard work, certainly I think they can pay off in the end

But again, are you utilizing creative and unique images for the primary image

I think that's a great idea if you are not already doing that. And there are my authors well known and verifiable on other sites

That wasn't something that was mentioned within the identifications. But again, that kind of goes back to, are you describing your, do you have a good About Us page

Do you have a good way to promote the people writing your content? do you have a good way to promote the website to give people information the search engine crawler

information on why you're trustworthy and reliable all good questions to answer all good things

to have on the website and kind of as we get close to the ending here the last thing is to

I guess kind of step three and step four about the same implement best oh implement best practices

to give yourself the best chances and over there Gordon Ramsey Once you do this fourth step, you're going to have a great dish

It going to be great It going to be perfect Gordon Ramsey wouldn serve something that So implement in the best practices So as I said at the very beginning these are just kind of the common things that you want to do

to help yourself in the Discover feed. You want to be meeting Google's expectations at every point

to make sure you have the best chance as possible to show up. So if you tried to optimize for Discover before

these will probably be simple for you. You're already doing them. You're doing a great job. The first thing is to optimize your images

to be at least 1,200 pixels, this is always a challenge even for me i really struggle with trying to create templates within

wordpress that offer this kind of functionality and there is a lot of kind of ambiguity sometimes

with different themes on how to do this so i would research plugins um for like full width

templates um or um you know if you're just starting a website or anything like that try and customize

the theme to get the images as best you can because getting these big images really do help

It's one of Google's Discover's primary guidelines is to have a big 1,200 pixel-wide image

both natively and on the site. So if you embed an image and you put an image onto the page and it condenses it to 700

it doesn't count. Even though it was maybe 1,500 before you put it in and condenses it, it doesn't count

You want it both natively and on the page at 1,200 pixels. Try and do that the best you can within your theme and within your, you know, try different

plugins and that I think that would be help. I think that can help for sure

And then also try and stay away from stock images as best you can. When it comes to optimizing for Discover, remember back to, you know

creative unique images of, hey, this image looks recent. I think that's a positive thing

So try and create a custom image, whether in Canva or a free tool to, you know

put your logo in there or anything like that, I think that could be a really positive thing for

you guys to be implementing. And then create in-depth category pages for the topics you're

wanting to target. I think this is probably one of my favorite recommendations in terms of

trying to optimize for this. So again, let's go back to the plumbing website, example. And let's say

for some reason, there's a lot of plumbing news that you write about. You know, Milwaukee came out with this new

tool, you know, DeWalt's coming up with this grand new thing. The water companies are

screwing us over in the plumbing industry. You know, you're writing about all this news

Something that you would want to do is that you'd want to create category pages dedicated to the

topics that you write about. So, for example, if you wrote consistently about Milwaukee plumbing

tools, you'd want a category page on Milwaukee plumbing tools. And you'd want to kind of create an

in-depth page on why are you the expert on this topic? Why are you, why are your authors

trustworthy in this way? And where are you getting your information? Answer the question

why am I the most trustworthy source for this type of content? And as you formulate this

and this doesn't have to be with just news, if you write about how to guidelines, if you write

about product reviews, if you write about really anything, formulate some categories

pages that are focused on a specific topic within your niche, something as specific as Milwaukee

plumbing tools. That's a very specific keyword. And if you have a category page that houses all of your

most recent articles and gives a really good description at the top of the page on why you are

reliable, why you are trustworthy, I think it's a really good strategy to help the search engine

crawler better understand why you are a reliable result for Discover. I think that can really help

in the long run and it's just a good idea to organize your content in that way based on authority

purposes. Don't just create a category page that just has the topic keyword and then the

articles. Make a customized landing page that is has information before your most recent articles

A good way to do that if you're using WordPress is create an actual page. Don't just create a page

for recent articles. Create a page. Customize the page, then insert the

recent articles at the bottom with a widget. That would be the best way to do that

Ensure you have a strong EAT strategy throughout your website. Having a strong EAT strategy, I think, is just a well-known thing that Google continues to promote

Good About Us page, good author pages, always be answering the question, why should people

trust me? That also can be answered in editorial pages. Explain to the search and crawler and explain to users

This is why I write the content. This is how I write the content

And this is what you should get out of the content. That's what it should be described and thoroughly explained throughout your content

And then work on enabling the follow feature for Discover so people can follow your content

This is kind of a bit, I thought about discussing this, but it can be kind of interesting to implement

If you just look up, enable follow feature for Discover, Google wrote a great article

step on how to do this. And I'd highly recommend you go through that. I think that could be really

helpful to kind of help people follow your content and discover and get some more interest that way

Definitely a positive signal. But again, for me to explain it in here, maybe that would be another

webinar because there's a lot of different things that can go into that. So other than that, and as

always, great, great content. If you don't have good content, you probably won't get right

If it's just, excuse me, if it's just AI generated content and you didn't really make any changes to that at all, probably not going to rank

As always, human generated content is probably going to perform the best in the long run

And I think for, of course, continue to utilize AI whenever you need to, but always try and lean towards more human generated as least my personal opinion as an SEO

But of course, I use AI too. So always be creating great content

And I think after you complete those four steps, I think everybody would be in a really good spot to get a good chance at creating of getting into Discover

That is just about