Google Discover SEO – Another Reason To Blog

Blogging Can Drive More Than Just Traditional SEO Traffic

I’ve recently noticed that almost every blog post that I’ve published on my fine art photography e-commerce site over the past nine months generates SEO traffic from Google Discover, usually within a day of publishing the article. While these blog posts do eventually drive traditional SEO traffic, it certainly takes longer than a day to start driving traffic so having this instant traffic boost from Google Discover can help especially if you have timely content that needs visibility.

How Does Google Discover Work?

Google Discover as of right now is only available on mobile devices that have installed the Google app. Unlike traditional search which is largely semantic-based, Google Discover results are based on audience interests so this is typically more upper-funnel traffic. Sites that have well-defined audiences and topics have a higher chance of receiving Google Discover traffic. In the example above, my site is all about fine art landscape photography and California locations. I do not talk about portraiture, weddings, politics, etc… anywhere on the site. As a result, the blog posts I’ve published in the past year generate Google Discover traffic when they’re closely aligned to my site’s core subjects.

Google Discover SEO Tips & Observations

1. Blog posts that are most closely related to your overall brand and site content are more likely drive Google Discover traffic.
2. Updating your blog posts can result in additional Google Discover traffic. For a few of my blog posts, I got some smaller traffic spikes 2+ months after the initial traffic spike.
3. Write clear, compelling article titles. Avoid link bait titles according to Google as those can be misleading.
4. Add Article or News schema where relevant. My photography blog articles don’t have either Schema yet still generates Discover traffic but this certainly wouldn’t hurt to help Google better understand the type of content on your site.
5. Make sure you have a RSS feed for your content.
6. Publish your content when people are most likely to be online. Saturday night for example is probably not the best time and won’t result in much traction.
7. Ensure that your blog content has clear CTA’s and a conversion funnel you can direct users to.

Track Google Discover Traffic in GA4

Unfortunately Google Discover traffic is often categorized as “Direct” channel traffic in GA4 rather than Organic Search. You’ll have to set up a custom event in order to separate out Google Discover traffic in GA4. This is how I recently set it up:

1. Create a Custom Dimension for Page Referrer with an event parameter named page_referrer.
2. Modify the Event value for Google Discover by using this Matching Condition: page_referrer parameter contains “android-app://com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox” the page_referrer parameter to the new value: Google Discover.
3. You can then create a secondary filter under Traffic Acquisition to search for Google Discover.

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